


Abandoned WIPs

by galaxylove



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Android AU, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Soulmates, im also in love with the moon, most of these are barely established except from the mihyo and the 3.67 sequel lol sry, old flames reunite, there's a lot!, uhhh like soul cycles but not soulmates, will add tags as I add works lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-07-22 19:36:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19982452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxylove/pseuds/galaxylove
Summary: So... it's been a while, and I've done some thinking and I desperately need to get rid of some of the drafts in my drive.These are stories that have been sitting there for nearly a year or more without anyone seeing them - and even if I'm not going to finish them, it would be a waste for me to at least not post them somewhere, you know?So, with all due warning: WARNING. THESE ARE UNFINISHED PROMPTS, DRAFTS, DRABBLES. THEY ARE LIKELY NEVER GOING TO BE FINISHED UNLESS SOMETHING MIRACULOUS HAPPENS. LIKE, A LOT OF THESE ARE LITERALLY GOING TO END MID-SENTENCE OR MID-PARAGRAPH.But hey, if you still want to pop in and take a look then feel free. There's... a lot.





	1. [SAMO] Android AU

**Author's Note:**

> All stories will have a rough summary of the plot/have the ship in the title etc. to make it more convenient. Again, I'm super sorry for being the way that I am because I was genuinely incredibly excited for... a lot of these stories. But ya know, that's how it is sometimes.
> 
> Also, just because I'm not gonna finish it doesn't mean someone can come along and take any of these, unless you ask nicely in which case I'll probably say yes 🤷🏻♀️
> 
> Anyway, without further interruption: Here's the samo android au I started writing in 2017.

“Jeongyeon, you can’t be serious.”

The aforementioned girl scratched the back of her neck sheepishly, an apologetic grin resting uneasily on her face.

“You know I wouldn’t ask you this unless I had to.”

Sana scoffed.

“I wasn’t expecting to be asked something like this at all, actually.” The irritated college student huffed exasperatedly, turning back to fiddle with the kettle close to boiling over. It was better she do something with her hands lest she wrap them around the older girls’ neck. 

Silence blanketed the two as Sana finished pouring her tea into her cup, hesitating briefly before heaving a deep sigh and reaching up into the cupboard to retrieve a second cup. It was a mug Jihyo had gotten her some two years ago for Christmas, nothing special just a plain white ceramic mug emblazoned with a giant, fat  _ ‘fuck this’  _ in black text. She hummed in agreement, pouring out a second cup of tea for the girl shifting anxiously from foot to foot behind her.

“Go on,” Sana sighs again, fingers curling around the cups to take them to the kitchen table. She sits, waits for Jeongyeon to hesitantly take the seat opposite her before pushing the steaming cup in her direction. Jeongyeon flinched as though she expected the other girl to throw the contents of the cup at her instead, and Sana would be lying if she said the thought hadn’t crossed her mind.

“Explain to me how you stole a project. And why you feel the need to drag me into this mess.”

Jeongyeon wilts under Sana’s sharp gaze, steely tone inflicting lashes against her skin with every word.

“I had to,” Jeongyeon murmurs, both hands wrapped tightly around the mug in front of her, “They were gonna throw her away.”

“Her?” Sana questions, placing her tea down on the table.

Jeongyeon nods firmly, something foreign and a little too resilient flashing through her eyes for Sana to associate with the older girl.

She was more suited to light hearted pranks and awful dad jokes that made everyone within hearing range groan exaggeratedly - not petty theft and minor rebellion.

“As you know we’ve been investing a lot of time and effort into a large scale project at the company recently.”

Sana nods, eyes trained curiously on her friend. She was a robotics student, lucky enough to be offered an advanced internship at one of the most prolific robotics companies in the country. She’d cried about it for days after getting the news, and Sana had wondered how the soft hearted girl would cope in the neck breakingly fast paced world of AI advancement.

Surprisingly well, it turns out, if this is anything to go by.

“We were specifically looking into AI immersion into everyday human life, and so we created a prototype.” Jeongyeon took a sip of her tea, hummed contently at the taste of the bitter brew.

“She was perfect.” 

She took another sip, and Sana raised a brow.

“You’re going to have to be a little less mysterious and poetic because I feel like I’m missing something here.” 

Jeongyeon sighed.

“We created a robot. An android, if you will. You can barely tell her apart from a regular human, if at all, really.” Sana’s staring at Jeongyeon with wide, unblinking eyes and she takes this as a cue to continue.

“She wasn’t our first model, but she was the closest we’ve ever gotten to achieving direct autonomy of a man made entity at this point in time.” She paused again, tilting her cup up to drain it of its contents. 

“And they wanted to destroy her.”

Sana jolted in her chair at the vehement slam of the mug against the tabletop, fingers tightening subconsciously around her own mug, still considerably full. 

“Why?”

Jeongyeon shrugged, eyes burning with something Sana didn’t want to recognise.

“They had a prototype for a new model. Complete rehash, entirely overhaul the computronics and schemes we spent months and  _ months _ redrafting again, and again. Initial testing and practice runs suggested that the prototype would be far more successful than project 0911 would ever be, and there was this one flaw we just  _ couldn’t  _ decode in her programming no matter how hard we tried.”

“How bad was the flaw?” Sana questioned softly.

“I didn’t think it would be all that bad,” Jeongyeon acquiets quietly, fingers drumming restlessly against the empty cup in her hand, “but the head engineer on the whole project said it would be more worthwhile to scrap everything.” 

Sana hums in encouragement, eyes peering up at her friend from the rim of her cup as warm steam from her tea fanned over her face. 

“He told me to destroy her.” 

Something somber washed over the both of them, and Sana set her cup back down on the table, rubbing at the exposed skin on her arm to mask the chill that ran along her entire body. 

“But you didn’t.” 

It wasn’t a question, but Jeongyeon answers it all the same, a barely whispered confession.

“But I didn’t.”

“Does anyone else know?”

Jeongyeon shakes her head firmly.

“No, it was late and nobody came to check that I had… done the job properly.” She shifts uncomfortably, the weight of her actions pressing down on her shoulders in full. “And the doormen were asleep when I left, so they didn’t even notice the extra body.”

Sana straightens as a thought crosses her mind.

“Jeongyeon.” 

The older girl flinches.

“Yes?” She replies meekly, suddenly very interested in the chip in the table that Dahyun had created once with a  _ very _ large kitchen knife that she most certainly was not allowed to use after that one incident.

“Where is she now? The project?”

“Ah,” Jeongyeon laughs shakily, hand reaching up to rub the back of her head in a very familiar gesture, “she’s in my car.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” 

  
  
  
  


There was some hushed shouting at four in the morning as Sana all but practically kicked the older girl out of her door, demanding that she wasn’t allowed back in until she had the android with her. Jeongyeon left hastily, car keys jingling noisily as she began to run down the long hallway of the apartment building before Sana decided to lock her out for good.

Sana wished she could have slammed the door shut afterwards, but the flat three doors down had a little girl who’d be waking up for school in, she checks her watch, just over three hours time. She groans exasperatedly, dragging a hand down her tired face at the realisation she also had to be awake for a class in three hours time. The door clicked closed softly and Sana dragged herself lethargically to the kitchen counter once more, setting the kettle back on the stove. 

The way things were going, she’d  _ definitely _ need more tea to make it through.

She’s about to pour herself out a cup when there’s soft rapping on her door, and she speaks just loud enough for Jeongyeon to hear her from outside that it’s open. She doesn’t bother turning around as she hears two sets of feet shuffle in apprehensively, waits until she hears the scrape of a chair and braces herself for what she’s about to see.

She turns around, and she most definitely was not prepared for this.

There was a girl, seemingly her age, maybe older, staring back at her with large, brown eyes. She was pretty, ridiculously so, and she was studying Sana with rapt attention, as though she were absorbing every detail of her character through her eyes.

Most startling of all though, was just how  _ real _ the body in front of her looked.

“Sana,” Jeongyeon began, coughing unsurely, “This is project 0911.” 

“Hello.” The android spoke softly, voice a little higher than Sana had expected but pretty all the same. She bent forward in a deep bow, mid-length pink tinged hair brushing against the floor briefly before straightening back up to stare at Sana expectantly.

“H-hello.” Sana stutters out, a little unnerved by the naturalness of this all. She looks to Jeongyeon, who is staring back at her like she did when they were younger and she wanted a bite of whatever Sana was eating, or if she was about to ask Sana if she could copy her answers for the homework she didn’t do.

Sana narrowed her eyes expectantly.

“She needs a place to stay.” Jeongyeon says, and the reason for this visit begins to sink in.

“Jeong, you kno-“ 

“ _ Please _ .” The older girl cuts her off, hands clasped tightly in front of her face pleadingly. 

“You know I don’t have the space at the dormitories, and there’s no way in hell I can keep her in the boot of my car for all eternity.”

“You kept her in the boot?”

Jeongyeon swallowed nervously, pleading posture growing a little shaky. 

“Haha,  _ noooooo? _ ” 

Sana rolls her eyes heavily, adding this to the infinite list of reasons for her to scold Jeongyeon in the afterlife. 

Jeongyeon is right though. Sana knows very well that there’s no privacy in the university dormitories (one of the  _ many _ reasons she searched for a place off campus this year, among others) and the girl could barely exist by herself there, let alone have another adult sized… entity? living with her. 

The stubborn breath she’d been holding in release in one, long exhale, and Sana felt the fight leave her along with it. Jeongyeon visibly brightened even as Sana deflated in defeat.

“You want her to stay with me.”

Jeongyeon nods enthusiastically, hands still clasped tightly in front of her face.

“Please?”

The tired dance major reached for the forgotten mug on the side, draining it in one, lengthy gulp. The brew was still hot, almost scorchingly so, but she relished the burn as it travelled through her. 

She nods and Jeongyeon surges forward, arms wrapping her in an embrace so tight she found herself struggling to breathe. The older girl is babbling jumbled strings of thank you’s against her ear, and Sana squeezes back once before pulling away gently. 

“You owe me, Yoo.”

“On my entire life ‘Tozaki. I’ll give you my first born, I swear.”

“Is that not basically what you’re doing right now?”

Jeongyeon laughs loudly and Sana winces at the sharp bark of noise that echoed around the room in the still silence of early morning. Her loud friend apologised hastily, stepping further away from Sana with a small cough.

“No but really, thank you.”

Sana peers past the taller girls’ shoulder to see the android watching them both with intrigue, a neutral expression on her face as she studied their interaction with mute fascination.

At least that’s what Sana hopes it is.

“What are friends for?” Sana sighs dramatically, and Jeongyeon smiles softly at her.

“Aiding minor theft, apparently.”

Jeongyeon yelps at the punch Sana throws her way, darting quickly to hide behind the android as an impromptu shield. Sana hesitates, fist wavering unsurely as she locks eyes with the android and her arm steadily lowers. She folds it across her chest instead.

“If I get into trouble with this, I’m pinning everything on you.”

Jeongyeon grins.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  
  
  


Jeongyeon leaves shortly after, the adrenaline rush from the night finally catching up to her and draining her body of all its energy. She bids them both farewell, wraps Sana in another bone crushing hug and pats the android affectionately on the head before she goes. The door shuts behind her, and Sana doesn’t fully expect the weight of this all to settle in until the morning at the very least.

Still, she’ll try her best.

Turning around with her brightest smile fixed in place, she doesn’t even flinch when she sees soft, brown eyes watching her attentively.

“Hello.”

The android tilted her head to the side like a dog would, and Sana fights back the urge to laugh.

“Hello.” She responds automotonously, still rooted to the same spot Jeongyeon had pulled her to earlier.

“You can move around, if you wish. I don’t mind.”

Bright eyes blinked languidly in response. If Sana squinted, she might be able to see the wires and connectors flashing brilliantly somewhere deep behind them. The android blinks again and slowly she begins to move, taking calculated, measured steps around Sana’s home.

It’s all too real, watching this pretty girl inspect every part of her home life so intensely and attentively, and if this had been any other girl Sana might have tried to goad them into conversation, convince them to fall in love with her for just one night.

Sana blinks again and the android is standing next to her, blinking back curiously.

“Are you like Jeongyeon?”

Sana stares back, words feeling foreign as they filled her mouth.

“Like Jeongyeon how”

“She helped create me.” Sana is finding it hard to think with these eyes boring into her skin. “She is a creator?”

It clicks into place, Sana realising the android was trying to piece together the brand new world in front of her with the limited knowledge she had learned from being tested in a laboratory.

“A scientist. She’s a robotics scientist.”

The android nods eagerly.

“And you are too?”

Sana laughs heartily, a genuine smile breaking out.

“Oh no,” she chuckles easily, “I dance.”

“Dance?” She gets in response, and she mentally berates Jeongyeon for not thinking to give her project a little more information on the world.

“It’s a type of movement,” Sana hums thoughtfully, thinking of the most simplistic way to describe something so fundamentally intrinsic to her. 

This would be like teaching a child, she realises absently, if the child in question was actually a beautiful young android. 

“You move to music.”

The android makes an excited noise at the last word, eyes lighting up impossibly brighter.

“Music! I like music! Jeongyeon plays music in the laboratory sometimes when nobody else is around.”

Sana smiles at this, at the eager clasp of the android’s hands in front of her body as she swayed absently. 

“Did Jeongyeon ever give you a name?”

She gets languid blinks in response.

“I am project 0911.” The android states devoidly.

“Did they not ever give you a name? Like my name? Or Jeongyeon’s?”

She watches as the android’s head tilts quizzically to the side, the action a little more endearing than Sana would admit.

“I am… project 0911.” She repeats again, though this time a little hesitant. 

“Would you like your own name? Like mine?”

“Sana is your name.”

She stifles a laugh.

“It won’t be the same as my name.”

She gets a soft ‘oh’ in response, watching as the girl in front of her seems to think hard in response. Sana is aware that there’s a processor working furiously somewhere deep inside the case of her body, but she’d like to imagine this was real.

“Can you give me a name?”

The question is thoughtful and childlike, round eyes staring at her expectantly and Sana’s brain short circuits at the simple question. Everything she’s ever known gets completely wiped from her mind - an absolute blank slate as not a single name springs to mind.

“Would you like me to?”

She keeps posing these questions, indirectly testing the independent thinking process of the living computer in front of her.

She seems to process this, mulls over the question briefly before smiling back at Sana.

“Jeongyeon says that everything has a name, so yes.”

So Jeongyeon can spout philosophy to her creation but not have the basic decency to give her a name other than project numbers. Typical.

Sana smiles at the android, frantically digging through folders and cabinets in her mind to think of a name to suit her. Characters from her favourite drama’s flashed through her head, shaking away the thoughts before they could take root and she sighs exasperatedly, glancing surreptitiously around the room for something,  _ anything _ to give her a name.

Her eyes won’t stop returning to the girl in front of her though, and she stops to really drink in her appearance.

She was fairly small, a good few inches smaller than herself, and she’s glad Jeongyeon had the decency to throw the spare clothes she keeps in her car over the android’s body before stealing her away. The clothes don’t quite fit, Jeongyeon’s frame is a little longer than hers, and the sweater hangs loosely from her arms.

It looks cute, Sana thinks.

She can’t discern much of her body shape from the oversized clothes dwarfing her proportions, but Sana has an uncomfortable hunch that herself and the android were suspiciously the same build. Pink tinged hair falls messily around her shoulders, as though she’d quite literally been thrown into the clothes Jeongyeon had given to her. 

Her friend was sweet, but tact had never been her strong suit.

Despite this, the android still manages to look painfully adorable, and Sana puts this down to how ridiculously beautiful she had been designed. 

She doesn’t know much about the world of science and computer engineering, often slipping into daydreams and nodding encouragingly every now and then whenever Jeongyeon would rant about troubles in the workplace. She thinks that maybe she’d have to listen to the exuberant robotics student from now on, because she’s having a hard time wrapping her head around how flawlessly beautiful they’ve managed to make this girl.

Everything about her looks  _ real.  _ It’s painful, really, and Sana finds herself stepping closer to really look at what was in front of her. 

It’s painstakingly obvious how much time and attention went into this project, as evidenced by the small, tiny pores she could make out in otherwise pristine skin. She also realises belatedly that the android’s chest was moving slowly up and down, in a natural imitation of breaths she did not need to take. 

Sana swallowed uneasily, driving the point through her head again and again that this was a computer, not a human.

_ What’s the difference? _ , a small voice whispered treacherously in her mind, and Sana beat it back down into the box of thoughts she’d never say. 

The android hasn’t taken her eyes off of her this entire time, letting silence fall over them both as Sana studies her. She hasn’t moved a single step, but Sana realises she’s close enough to touch her. 

So she does, fingers stretching out to hesitantly stroke through the loose strands of her hair. She gasps at the contact, marvelling at how lifelike the synthetic strands felt between her finger tips, and Momo is smiling at her softly. 

Sana must look like an idiot, staring at her in absolute wonder and bewilderment the way she was, but the android didn’t move - just watched, and waited. 

A lorry rumbles past noisily outside, startling her out of her actions and letting the pink strands fall back to the android’s shoulders. It was a pretty colour, Sana laments. It reminded her of the peaches on her Grandma’s farm, and something sparked to life in her dormant brain.

“Momo.”

She got confused blinks in response.

“Mo...mo?” 

The name sounds even better in her voice, even with the confused lilt in her tone and Sana grins triumphantly.

“Your name is Momo.” 

She receives a blinding smile.

“Momo. I like it!”

Sana smiles in spite of the fatigue overwhelming her system, glancing at the clock on the wall to see it was nearing 5am by now. Maybe she would skip her lectures tomorrow.

“Alright Momo,” she declares, stepping away to distance herself from the newly named girl, “I need to sleep now.”

“Sleep like, recharge?”

“Yes,” Sana smiles again, rubbing tiredly at her eyes, “I need to recharge.”

“Can I come with you?”

The question startles her back awake. She likes the android, that much she knows. She soft spoken and child like in her actions, looking at Sana with such unbridled expectation that she almost feels guilty for wanting to say no. 

“Don’t you need to recharge too?”

“Jeongyeon says I should have at least a week left of reserves before I need to recharge, as long as I don’t do anything too demanding.”

“I’m going to be unconscious for the next few hours Momo, are you sure you don’t want to do something else?” 

The girl in front of her stills, eyes straying from Sana’s face to lower to the floor.

“I don’t get to choose, usually.” 

Something in Sana’s chest drops dramatically into her stomach at the small admittance, absently realising that this truly was Momo’s first taste of freedom - and choice.

“You can choose whatever you want to do now.”

Her head snaps up, eyes full of light again and if Sana squints she swears she could see the beginning of tears pooling in their depths.

_ Jeongyeon really goes all out in her field of work, huh? _

“I-I want,” Momo begins, tripping over her words unfamiliarly as she tries to process having free reign of everything she is, “to learn. I want to learn.”

Her face is overcome with shy curiosity, eyes sweeping the room to land on the bookcase in the far corner. She looks back to Sana, as though she is asking for permission, and Sana nods gently.

“Good night, Momo.” Sana whispers quietly, walking past the excitable girl who had already stacked about seven books ready to read on Sana’s coffee table. The sight is endearing, Momo rifling hurriedly through each of the books on her shelves, pausing to pick out the ones with the brightest and most colourful covers.

She shuts the door softly behind her, pretends she didn’t hear the adorable “good night” Momo whispered back and sinks into her sheets. 

Maybe when she wakes up, she’ll realise this was all just a really elaborate, fucked up dream.

  
  
  


She wakes up blearily to the smell of something cooking in her nostrils. She stretched lazily, limbs popping noisily with little cracks and she forces herself to roll over with a heavy thump. She squints blindly at the little red digits glaring at her from her alarm clock, noting that it was already nearly midday.

She’d slept through the entirety of her morning lectures, though the thought doesn’t make her jolt to full consciousness like it should have.

Falling back into her bed and snuggling into the warm sheets, she slowly recalls the events of this morning with an ever increasing amount of dread weighing her down. 

Jeongyeon had stolen an android.

Jeongyeon had bought the stolen android to her apartment and left it with her.

There was an android somewhere outside her bedroom door.

She curled tighter into her sheets, balling them frustratedly into her fists before releasing them just as quickly.

What the  _ fuck _ was she going to do with an android to take care of?

The loud crash of something falling to the floor in her living room made her think she better figure it out fast.

She jumps out of bed, throwing the covers somewhere onto the floor and almost stumbles in her haste to reach the door. She fumbles with the handle, finally pulling the door wide open to be greeted by, what could best be described, a  _ mess. _

__ Momo; sat in the middle of her living room with what looks like every single book in the apartment in a messy array around her and over the couch, as thought they’d all been dropped unceremoniously and at once. Big, startled eyes are blinking confusedly, looking around until they land on Sana staring at her open mouthed from the bedroom doorway.

“Good afternoon!” 

It’s bright and energetic, a blinding smile on the android’s face as she hastily scrambles to her feet, books falling to the floor as she does so. She looks excited, invigorated by Sana’s presence and it takes a few moments for the girl to realise they were stuck in some sort of weird, staring stand-off as Momo waits for a response.

“Hi,” She says slowly, stepping into the room to take in everything that had somehow gone wrong whilst she had been sleeping. 

There’s a lot.

Besides the books scattered across the entire expanse of her carpet, there’s pillows strewn along the side of her coffee table with the blanket she throws over the sofa whenever she has guests over, looking like a sort of makeshift bed. Or nest, would be more appropriate, judging how cosy it seemed. The TV is on, and she doesn’t have her glasses on so she can’t see it clearly but she’s pretty certain it’s a nature documentary, with the volume low and blurry subtitles flashing at the bottom of the screen.

__ And then there’s Momo in the middle of it all, standing stiffly as if she’s not entirely sure how to react in this situation. She’s just watching, eyes trained keenly on the tight lipped girl taking slow, measured steps towards her. 

“Did you read all of those?” She gestures towards the books littering the floor. Momo’s eyes light up again.

“Yes! But then I didn’t know how else to learn, so I pressed a lot of buttons and switches.”

That explains the TV - she’d wondered how Momo had managed to turn it on.

“What other things did you press?”

The android jolts forward, stepping carefully over the books at her feet to jump towards the light switch. She flips it up, eyes wide and bright when the dim light bulb flickers to life before turning it back off again. Momo’s staring at her expectantly again.

She coughs, hiding her smile with a fist.

“So you had fun?”

An inquisitive tilt of her head in response almost has Sana’s smile stretching wider than her hand can cover.

“How do I know if it was ‘fun?’”

Sana pinches the bridge of her nose with her forefinger and thumb, eyes screwed shut. 

“It just is. You’re happy, you smile, you want to do it again. You like whatever it is you are doing.”

Momo stares at her blankly for a brief moment, less than a second, and Sana knows she’s processing this and turning it into something she can understand and use.

“I liked it a lot.” She says softly, warm grin making it far too difficult for Sana to really be irritated in any way. 

She just nods, bending down to pick up one of the many books to begin putting them back on the shelf. Momo bends down too, automatically stacking a half a dozen books into her arms.

“You learned how to clean?”

Momo shakes her head.

“Jeongyeon used to get me to help her clean up the laboratory whenever it was her shift.” 

Sana shakes her head good naturedly. Her friend truly was something else.

Momo was fast and efficient, able to carry more books than Sana could ever hope to carry. She followed her silently, waiting for instruction and eagerly complying when she received it. It kind of felt like what she’d imagined having a dog would feel like. That line of thought made her feel a lot better than knowing that Momo was likely designed with service in mind.

She had to draw the line somewhere though, namely when Momo tried to follow her to the bathroom.

“Hey, Momo,” The android looks back at her with an excited smile and she  _ almost _ feels bad, “Why don’t you try and learn some more?”

She perks up at the suggestion but deflates just as quickly.

“I already read everything.”

“What about the TV?”

The android’s nose wrinkles.

“That is a very slow method of learning.”

Sana laughs in spite of the insistent reminder from her bladder that she needed to go, like,  _ now.  _

“Do you want to go on my laptop?”

Momo tilts her head curiously.

“You want me to go on top of your lap?”

“No no no,” she says as she throws her head back in laughter, hand coming up to cover her mouth, “My laptop. It’s a portable computer.”

Rich, deep eyes flash brilliantly bright.

“Like me!”

She… can’t really protest that.

“Sort of?” 

She takes light, quick steps into the living room, Momo’s heavier ones thudding in sync against the faux wood of the hallway. She’s a little surprised the android didn’t discover and play around with the device at any point of her adventures last night, pulling it out from underneath the couch.

“Is there anything else like that under there?”

Maybe like, a few too many lint bunnies and the odd candy wrapper or two. She shakes her head.

“There,” she presses enter on the small keyboard, logging in to see the desktop display of her and an old friend on vacation in Bali some three years ago now, “Learn to your heart's content.” She launches the internet browser, tapping on the search bar and pushes the device into Momo’s outstretched hands. 

“This will tell you anything you want to know.”

“Anything?”

Sana hesitates. Momo presses a key experimentally, mouth open in an impressed little ‘o’ when the corresponding letter appears on screen. 

It’s doubtful that Momo would be the face of the impending robot uprising that Dahyun always warns them about. Access to unlimited knowledge wouldn’t be  _ too _ bad.

“Anything,” she confirms with a nod, stretching across the android to type in the address to a wildlife website, “Try and stay on this website, okay?”

“Okay.”

She begins frantically hopping to the bathroom to finally respond to the demands of her screaming bladder. She wouldn’t be too long, anyway. 

  
  


——

  
  


She’d taken a little longer than she intended.

She hadn’t meant to, but she realised while she was in there that she should probably take a shower, and she’s always been a firm believer that bathing is an experience, not just a chore.

So she indulges. Shampoo, conditioner, more than a few belting renditions of her old school playlist blasting full volume from the waterproof speaker attached to the tiled wall. Scrubbed until her skin gleamed new and pink and she finally felt that maybe, just maybe, she was awake and fresh enough to deal with the mess Jeongyeon had unceremoniously thrown her in.

She steps out of the bathroom, towelling her hair dry and not really expecting to see the android sobbing on her couch, but that’s what she got. 

“Hey, hey Momo, what’s wrong?” She rushes to the android’s side, sinking down on her haunches and looking at the screen for whatever it was that made her so distressed.


	2. [SAMO] 09:47AM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Samo. Soulmates. Momo keeps going back to try and save the love of her life.

Her eyelids open slowly.

Nausea sits familiarly in the pit of her stomach, expected and resented, along with the head splitting pain pulsating somewhere at the back of her eyes. There’s the clink of a coffee cup behind her; boiling water hissing as it hits ceramic and the muted chatter of people living their life with blissful ignorance that they’d already lived this day before. 

Her hands feel numb and weighted as she pats down her clothes for her phone. Finds it in the back pocket of her jeans and fishes it out mechanically.

09:45 am. 19th of January, 2019. 

Her stomach tightens, eyes lingering on the bright smiles on the lockscreen as it fades to black. She still has time.

There’s a still warm cup of something light on the small, circular table she was seated at. Her fingers curl around it, grateful for the warmth and brings the drink up to her lips. Takes a customary glance at her surroundings as she takes a sip. It’s bitter; not as sweet as she would have had it in the past, but the past doesn’t exist for her anymore. Not really, not in a long time, and she’s long since given up counting. 

(There’s tally marks along her arm in marker pen. Dark and defiant against pale skin; some light, some harsh - some slashed messily out of anger, or frustration.

Most are tired.

So,  _ so _ tired.)

There’s few people in the coffee shop. Just two barista’s talking amicably behind the counter as they prepare an order, and an exasperated mother standing at the counter with a very sullen looking toddler’s hand clutched tightly in her own. A pretty student, or someone Momo assumes is a student, typing fervently at the keys of her laptop in the furthest corner of the shop, two empty white cups pushed to the side of the papers lined with neat, precise handwriting threatening to fall off of the limited surface space. She takes a break from typing to reach for the third cup of coffee with steam curling at the top, not really paying attention and spilling the contents over the formerly pristine sheets with a hardly bitten back curse. 

There’s a twinge of empathy underneath the apathy resting heavily on her chest as she watches the girl go through half a stack of napkins to try and save the ruined sheets. She’ll remember this for next time, if there’s a next time (she’s running out of space on her arm, every inch of skin marred with fresh and faded ink) and save the girl some trouble.

But not right now. 

She hasn't got the time. 

The chair scrapes noisily against the wooden floor when she stands, much too loud against the gentle blanket of sound that descends upon this sleepy little place in the lull between rush hours. The child's whining comes to a halt at the abrupt interruption, eyes darting across the room to all land on her as she slaps a few bills down on the table. They follow her for a few moments before everything returns to normal; coffee machines hissing as they go through their cleaning cycle, the clink of a spoon against a mug as one of the workers hand over the drinks with a forced smile. 

And just like that, the intrusion is forgotten. Insignificant, small. Nothing impactful that would affect their day, surely. 

Momo knew better. She checked her phone again. 

09:47 am. 

Time was running out. 

The bell above the door chimes on the way out. Like a farewell, but not final. As though it knows she'll be back. 

She shoves her hands into her pockets, balled tightly into bitter fists as she starts to walk through the body of people lining up the sidewalk. Tunes out everything around her, wills herself to walk a little bit faster than before, if she could just make it to the corner a  _ little _ bit-

“You hear about what happened earlier?”

Her feet are rooted to the ground as soon as she turns the corner. 

“Real shame.” The older guy runs his hand through white, wispy hair, flattening it down only for it to stick back up again. “Heard the poor girl was just trying to get to class.”

Momo’s eyes went out of focus as she takes in the blue tape cordoning off the whole area. The smashed glass littering the pavement and spilling out onto the road. The policeman directing pedestrians to the other side of the street. 

“Heard it happen you know. The crash and everything, sounded real bad but, you know, I couldn't -,” The first man pauses. He looks familiar, from what Momo can make out through the tears. “Couldn't make it out in time. She was already gone.”

“Did you know her?” The voice is kind. Sympathetic. Momo’s heard it a thousand times before. 

“Saw her around the neighbourhood a few times. Always kind, and pretty. Had the kind of face that could make you do anything, you know?”

She should be numb to this by now. 

“Mm. Such a shame.”

It hurts just as much as every other time before. 

Anger pricks behind her eyes, hot and wet and mixed with the tears that won't stop streaming down her cheeks. She bites her tongue. They wouldn't know. They  _ couldn't _ know. 

The strangers walking by are looking at her curiously. Most look away hurriedly, ashamedly. Eyes cast down to the sidewalk underneath their feet at the guilt of watching a stranger almost break down and not being able to do anything. Or maybe it was out of discomfort, or maybe some assumed she was losing her mind. 

Maybe she does a little more every time. 

She turns away before she gets another empty apology in the guise of a tight lipped smile. 

It didn't happen this early last time. It had been daylight; late morning, in the middle of a busy intersection and the lights were red but that still didn't stop one, careless truck driver from checking his phone at the wrong time and running it straight through.

She should have had time. 

She should have saved her. 

(This time.)

There's always something new. Something different every time she comes back to try and save her again. A consequence of the knock on effect of one, foolish human picking apart and trying to thread back together the strings of fate. She’d never really known how to sew. All clumsy fingers and impatient hands. Pin prick, dotted stains of blood all over the fabric, and sore fingers healed with kind kisses and carefully placed bandaids.The ripples had grown into large, turbulent waves without her even noticing long ago, dangerous and threatening to capsize her tiny little boat the more she rocked it.

One more time. She rubs at her tired, swollen eyes with the sleeves of her jacket, ignoring the multitude of black lines that adorn her wrist in the edge of her vision. Makes a note to find space for another one.

One more time. Again, and again. 

Until she succeeds. 

Until she brings Sana home. 

She closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath. And waits. 

\---

If Momo had known that even the tiniest of actions held such inconceivable consequences, she would have made more of an effort to be more considerate as a child. 

It’s hard, when you’re five years old and unaware that taking the last carton of milk at the end of lunch time is going to be the defining moment that causes Myoui Mina to hold a grudge against you until the end of 3rd grade. Admittedly, Momo hadn’t  _ known _ that the other girl was eyeing up the lone carton from the other side of the room when she grabbed it in her chubby, child sized hands and claimed her stake on it. And okay,  _ maybe _ Momo had already had her milk carton at the beginning of lunch time. And it was a  _ little _ weird that there was one left over when there was always exactly enough for every child in her class. 

Honestly, she just thought that maybe someone was off sick that day. Not that there was a shy, quiet girl waiting until everybody else had settled down to go and grab her milk, and drink it to herself somewhere nice and peaceful.

And so her impulsive, greedy little brain had seen the milk. It said ‘gimme’ in loud, capitalised, emboldened red letters that was kind of hard for a five year old to ignore, whispered to her that she should go and grab the milk, even if she had already had one. 

And she did. And it had tasted just as good as she knew it would, and she was none the wiser that this one, tiny, harmless action would cause the quietest girl in the class to resent her for an entire 3 years. And the worst part perhaps, is that Momo didn’t have a clue. Only knew this because Mina mentioned it at a sleepover when they were 15, and much closer; an embarrassed confession that was more half mumbled into her hands than spoken out loud. 

It struck her in that moment - that something so small and inconsequential to you could seem so memorable and notable to someone else. That her one  _ tiny _ action could cause such a big ripple in someone else's pond. And that every miniscule action that she’s taken throughout her entire life has set off ripples in hundreds and thousands of other ponds - that she’s been throwing stones she didn’t even know were in her hands this whole time.

Every ripple makes a wave.

(And every wave has got to break somewhere.)

She thinks that there’s some stones she hasn’t even known about. Small stones, and big stones, all filling up the palms of her hands until she can’t fit anymore. Her hands are only small; baby hands, as Sana would say. Not made to carry stones of any sort.

Made to fit  _ just _ right against Sana’s. To stay soft. Uncalloused. 

But she looks down at her palm and all she sees are jagged, ripped tears in the skin. Some places worn away completely from all the stones from over the years, until there’s holes in her flesh and the stones are falling straight through no matter how hard she tries to keep her hands clutched tightly to her chest.

She’s wading further and further into the water everyday. Creates a wave with every step, and every stone that crashes down around her sinks its way to the very bottom. 

She doesn’t have long before she drowns. Before she’s waded in far too deep, head struggling to stay above the surface. Hands clawing through the water to try and stay afloat until another wave comes crashing in without a single warning to take a breath, dragging her down, and down, until she can’t fight her way back up. Until she drowns, crushed by turbulent waters and the weight of the stones tying her down. 

There was no way to to stop a wave once it’s begun. Not a chance; not even with all the luck and fate in the world on your side. 

But she could stop the stone from falling in the first place.

And that’s why she plunged into the water. Over and over, swimming back to the shore every day, limbs trembling from exhaustion and soaked to the bone. With more cuts and bruises than she’d ever cared to count; they’re not important, never were, only caring about finally figuring this out. About throwing herself at the problem with brute force, blunt tactics - a war of attrition between her body and the waves. 

If she just kept trying… if she just kept going back, again, and again -- and again.

The universe  _ will _ give her back to her.

Or she’ll die trying. 

  
  


\---

  
  


The first time it happened, Momo hadn’t been able to think past the shock.

It was quick, at least. Painless for her - that’s what the coroner said. It’s what the officers who consoled her said too, as though that made the ache in her own chest any less. And it did, in an odd sort of way.

It didn’t change the fact that she was gone, though. Or do anything about the dull throbbing in her head, or the space in her chest that felt like it was being carved out; a dull blade puncturing flesh and skin in unpredictable, vicious strokes.

She’d read the books, of course. Everyone had. Watched the movies and heard conversation and discussed the subject in hushed, respectful tones with grandmothers and grandfathers and the kind aunties who lived on their street. Like an abstract thought - a notion so separated from reality that nobody really paused to consider that actually, it might happen. 

And it did. 

All the books. All the movies. All the conversations whispered like a prayer outside the confession booth. 

Nothing, absolutely nothing in the world, could have prepared her for the pain of losing a soulmate. 

Almost every single person in her life had focused the majority of their time and effort into engineering a way to find their soulmate a little quicker than fate had planned. Some people had whole, convoluted schemes to force it - multiple profiles on every website they could find; advertisement, billboards, standing on top of a rooftop and screaming their name from the top of their lungs in the hopes that maybe,  _ just  _ maybe, their soulmate could hear them. 

Momo decided to just leave it up to fate. That's what her grandma told her to do, and it’s how her parents got together - a gut instinct that had both of them raise their heads and look at each other across a crowded platform, the soul link slamming into full effect the moment they locked eyes and knocking them both off of their feet at the force. 

So, maybe she’d been raised to be a romantic. Not like seeing the world through a rose coloured lense was necessarily a bad thing. It was nice to see tints of pink on everything and everyone. And if anybody asked her why pink was her favourite colour; she’d tell them as such. It made life a little bit lighter - gave a splash of vibrancy to the everyday dull and bleak paint palette that the cynics liked to colour the world with. 

It made her love, love. As horrifically cheesy and 90’s teen romance that sounded - it stood true. And it was by far the easiest way to explain how she felt about that teeny tiny aspect of her life. Because she’d grown up reading all the books, and watching all the movies. She’d talked to everybody she could from the moment she really learned what fate had in store for her; can’t even begin to count the number of times she’s grilled her parents over their textbook, by the book, Julia Roberts esque encounter. Would make her sister turn the volume of the radio up every time the daily soulmate segment aired at 6pm (sharp), and would sit in the backseat of the car on the ride home from dance class with a dreamy, wistful smile on her face; staring out the window and listening to all the different lovestruck voices recounting their tales for all the listeners sat there waiting for their chance to fall in love. Hana would roll her eyes, and her father would chuckle to himself in the driver’s seat, and Momo would trace patterns on the window with the tip of her finger in the condensation made by her breath. 

So to say that Momo had been waiting for this her entire life would be an understatement. 

But, despite that - despite all the preparation, and the reading, and the excessive consumption of every single piece of media that depicted her future romance in every way possible; nothing, and she really meant  _ nothing,  _ could have prepared her for how exactly she  _ found _ her soulmate either. 

Out of all the scenarios. Out of all the extravagant, ludicrously dreamed of fantasies and situations she had created in her mind from the moment she can first remember - not a single one of them could have prepared her for the fact that Minatozaki Sana would… reject her? 

It's one of her favourite memories, looking back on it. Which sounds strange, and a little masochistic at the same time, because who in their right mind would harbour such fond feelings over the moment their soulmate looked them in the eye for the first time -  _ and walked away?  _

She would, apparently. 

It had been a day kind of like today. Well, almost - as much as the concept of ‘today’ exists for Momo now, and in the sense that the weather wasn't very exciting. Maybe a little warmer than today, though. It was a day in April; warm enough that Momo didn’t have to wear her coat on her way to lectures, but cold enough that she needed a jacket or a long sleeved shirt to not get goosebumps the moment she stepped outside. 

An unassuming kind of day. Momo certainly didn't expect anything past the usual routine she adhered to on Thursdays - wake up (mostly on time), attend her 1pm lecture, swing by the ballet studio afterwards to subtly waggle her eyebrows at Mina every time she tried to act normal in front of her crush, and then either hit up the college student renowned ramen stand a stone’s throw away from her dormitory, or just shuffle back inside and hibernate for the rest of the day.

Easy peasy. 

Except when Momo actually roused herself awake enough to pull back the covers and reach out for her phone somewhere on the pillow next to her, the screen blinded her for 10 seconds, and then dutifully informed her that it was, precisely, 13:03.

Ah fuck _.  _

Not so easy peasy _.  _

The day started with Momo stumbling around her room trying to grab everything as fast as possible; quite literally throwing on whatever clothes were closest (this might be yesterday's shirt? She doesn’t know, or care) and shoving her textbook and notes into her backpack. Tragically has to forgo a shower, but she's sure her seatmate won't notice too much, and sprints out the door with a limp, kind of pathetic looking banana in hand for her breakfast. 

She doesn't understand how none of her 5 alarms went off. A quick look at the settings and - wow, they've all been disabled.  _ Huh. Weird.  _

It's puzzling, but she doesn't focus on it too much. 

The universe must have had some sort of vendetta against her today, because the main pathway to her lecture hall was closed off for maintenance. Which meant taking the considerably longer route that went around half of the campus and looped back around. 

God, her lecturer was going to murder her. 

No, she's sure there's another way around - pretty certain Jeongyeon mentioned it one time. She veers off of the pathway onto the grass, jogging around the side of the library. Her pace falters for a moment when the overly large fence comes into sight, but Momo’s scaled bigger things, and being any later to her lecture was worse than possibly breaking a leg. She shrugs off her backpack, winding up her arm in a few, practice swings before the offendingly pink object sails over the fence and out of sight, hearing it land on the other side and preparing to launch herself up and over too. 

This definitely counts as a replacement for her morning workout routine, because  _ fuck _ was she struggling to pull herself up the wooden slats. She eventually does, after a minute of huffing and heaving and unrestrained curses, and takes a moment to sit atop the high fence and look at the view. 

Maybe she’d come and sit up here another time, because it  _ really _ did look pretty with the trees lining the edge of campus coming into spring, and the flower buds slowly beginning to unfurl in the flower beds along the back wall of the library. 

And the pretty girl sat cross legged underneath the Oak tree watching her in thinly veiled curiosity and amusement. 

Momo looks away before they can make eye contact, shameful heat crawling up her neck and onto her face as she swings her other leg over and judges the distance if she jumps. Her initial plan had been to throw herself down on top of her backpack, but now she has an audience and she can  _ feel _ her watching her as she weighs up the pros and cons of trying to scale down slowly or just sending a prayer up to the big man and hoping for the best. 

Something is telling her to look up, though. To sneak another glance at the pretty stranger, in  _ spite _ of her shyness and anxiety picking at the frayed edges of her nerves the longer she sits atop this stupidly high fence. 

“Are you stuck?” 

That voice sounded  _ way _ too close to come from under the tree. Momo snapped her head up in surprise, and that was the exact moment everything sort of, well, fell into place. 

The effect was instantaneous, from the second her eyes looked directly back into this strange girls. It kind of felt like someone swung a sledgehammer straight into her ribcage, shattering bone and punching all the air out of her lungs in one fell swoop. It was incomparable to anything she'd ever felt before; an all consuming sensation that burned trails along her skin and set fire to her blood, and it felt like there was a piece of string or an elastic band looping endlessly around her chest, pulling tighter and tighter until it felt like she couldn't breathe. 

Momo didn’t even register she was falling until a surprised scream comes from the girl below her, slamming into the ground with as little tact and grace as she could have possibly imagined. It doesn't hurt though. Not a bit - not nearly as much as the rubber band snapping into place around her heart, squeezing tight and connecting her to - 

Her one hand is clutched to her chest, concern painted in thick swaths along her face and eyes wide with shock. She's still standing somehow (Momo has no idea how because she felt like she'd just gone a couple of rounds with a polar bear) on shaky legs, with her other hand covering her mouth. Momo groans, grimacing at the fact that her tongue felt like it had been buried in the earth overnight. She swipes at her mouth with the back of her hand, spitting out grass and what she hopes is dirt.

Not only is Momo hunkered down on the ground on all fours like some sort of quadruped, discarded prop from alien vs predator - in front of what  _ might _ possibly be the prettiest girl she has  _ ever _ had the privilege of seeing - but said prettiest girl in the world is also probably her soulmate. 

At least it couldn’t get any worse, right?

She shoves herself to her feet with a groan, mind running a mile a minute with a dozen different mental pep talks all at once. What should she say? Should she play it cool? Act like she didn’t just fall fifteen feet and eat dirt? Maybe she should run a hand through her hair? Yeah, that sounds good, let’s - her hands halfway up before it jerks back down. No that's stupid. She should just - I don't know, put it in her pocket or something? 

Everything in her head was impossibly overwhelming. The pain of the fall was actually kicking in, and there was elation bouncing around inside her chest that was starting to make her feel kind of queasy, but at least she felt like she could actually breathe now that the soul bond had snapped into place which, for the record, definitely confirmed that this girl was her soulmate. Momo could feel her. Something intangible inside her; an unknown, vague presence that pulsated just beneath her ribs. 

It… almost felt real enough to touch. Her hand brushes the front of her chest absently, as though maybe if she tries…

She notices the girl doing the same, maybe unaware that she’s even doing it at all. 

Alright Momo, deep breath.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Big smile. Show teeth - not  _ too _ much teeth,  _ Momo _ . 

“Hi.”

There it was. The moment she’s been waiting for as long as she can remember. The first moment of forever. Silence stretches between them - taut, palpable. 

Eyes wide with shock blink finally. Momo watches several different emotions play out on her face. Maintains the toothy grin the entire time it takes her to cycle from shock, disbelief, and then into something she doesn’t really know how to decipher, and then she’s running away and-

Wait. What?

Her jaw almost hits the floor as she watches her soulmate start fucking sprinting as fast as she can in the opposite direction. Like - real arms pumping, head tucked down, kicking up dirt as she runs sprinting. She’s too busy reeling from the sheer shock and absurdity of the sight to move straight away. Just gawks helplessly, maybe a little pathetically as the blonde head of hair disappears around the corner of the library building. 

No way. 

No  _ fucking _ way did her soulmate take one look at her and disappear into the horizon like the lone fucking ranger. 

  
  


  
\--  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Minji0517**

Has anyone seen the soulmate posters around campus?

**Siyeonandon**

Oh man lmao

**KSG94**

At least it looked cute? :D

**YuggieFC**

Dude that’s so fucking rough LOL

**Seunghee_95**

Imagine the love of your life running away from you

**Chachachaeng**

Honestly id cry 

**Marklee**

I mean it’s kind of funny 

  
  


Momo runs her hands down her face tiredly, shutting her laptop so she wouldn’t have to read anymore comments about the tragedy that was becoming her life. It’d been about two weeks since she met her soulmate, about nine days since she put the posters up and a solid twelve since Jeongyeon had ripped the everloving shit into her for what went down. Like, yeah okay Jeong - not everyone can meet their soulmate in their first class of second year and lend her a pen because she’d forgotten hers. Some people fall fifteen feet to the ground and apparently got paired up with fucking speedy gonzales instead.

__

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk if anyone's curious about the ending but basically, momo strikes up a deal with the person who gave her the ability to go back in order to save sana - with the small condition that they still technically lose each other. no memories, a complete factory reset on everything that is sana and momo. no meeting, no moving in, no falling in love. but she's alive, and that's what matters. but hey, momo bumps into a pretty girl with an achingly familiar smile on a cold january morning in her favourite cosy coffee shop. so, that's something at least.


	3. [MIHYO] Strip club AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh MAN this one was ambitious lol.. basically, jihyo owns a strip club and she looks after her girls with everything she fucking has. mina gets a job there for undisclosed reasons and... yeah, there was gonna be a lot to this. side samo, with a little bit of chaeng thrown in sometimes for fun. nahyun too,, basically this fic was pure self indulgence. oh some misana as well on top of the mihyo and samo bc they're all grown women who understand that sometimes sex is just sex yakno
> 
> you also get the privilege of seeing my 'fantastic' method of note taking and planning near the end. jesus christ I wrote this in like 2017...

The restless fingers drumming rhythmically on the table did little to soothe her nerves, trying with all her might not to shift uncomfortably on her seat. Experienced eyes regarded her carefully, dark and hooded as they glanced over her form for the better part of the last few minutes. 

It was nerve wracking, but she supposes that was the whole point. She’d have to get used to this, the fixated stare of dozens of customers expecting her to put on a show. She had to, if she wanted this job.

The woman across the table shifts unexpectedly, and Mina’s eyes snap back to focus.

The lighting of this room makes it difficult to see her clearly, but she’s beautiful. That much Mina can discern. Her manner is calculated, a precise formula designed to present herself as professionally as possible.

It works, Mina admits in her head, thoroughly intimidated by her potential future employer.

She won’t let it show, however, meeting the other woman's thorough stare with refined steel in her eyes. She’d undertaken research - she knew what hardships to expect of this world and how resolute she’d have to be to survive.

Her will falls through when the woman drops her gaze, a low, throaty chuckle spilling into the intense silence that cloaked them oppressively. Her fingers finally stop their movements, her hands moving forwards to rest easily on the table, and when her eyes flit back up to meet Mina’s they’re warm, drenched in mirth and perhaps a little intrigue. There’s a bemused smile tugging up the corners of her lips, and the intimidation in Mina’s stomach shifts into something a little more dangerous.

“You don’t have to be so afraid.”

Her voice is surprisingly soft, a low, rich timbre that washes between them both pleasantly. It mixes easily with the lazy piano notes drifting slowly from the corner of the room, and the growing unease somewhere in the pit of her stomach barely eases at the reassuring words. The woman shifts again, shrugging off the black blazer from her shoulders to reveal a crisp, white shirt underneath. 

It’s attractive; Mina’s eyes tracking each movement keenly, jaw forcefully clamped shut lest her tongue dart out to wet suddenly dry lips.

Her face remains neutral despite the taut jut of her jaw, even as white sleeves get tugged sharply up defined, tanned arms and the other woman lets out a breathy sigh of relief.

“Sorry about that,” she smiles apologetically, hand reaching out to run through slightly disheveled hair, “The jacket is a little too stifling in here. Is this okay?”

Mina prises her jaw open a little too forcefully, hopes her eagerness isn’t so apparent.

“Yes, of course.” She adds with a small smile. The woman opposite her smiles back.

She doesn’t say anything for a few moments, leaning forwards in her chair ever so slightly, and those damn eyes are sweeping her appraisingly once more. She’s a hair's breadth away from caving, the words on the tip of her tongue to beg the other woman to look away and let her catch her breath if just for a moment when she begins to speak.

She’d prepared herself for a wide variety of volatile and extreme emotions, knowing the line of work she was trying to get herself into. She’d expected the intimidation, and she’d even expected an underlying threat of danger in the air - but she hadn’t expected…  _ this. _

__ “Why are you here?”

She hadn’t expected the reserved, tired question, eyes widening in surprise. 

“I...I want to dance.”

There’s silence for a moment, and Mina knows she’s being judged of a sort.

“But you don't need to.” Mina swallows thickly as the woman in front of her leans forward, giving her a clear view of her face as she moves into the light. She almost chokes on the saliva in her mouth.

“You don’t  _ need _ what I can offer you.” She gestures to their surroundings with a vague wave of her hand. Mina looks around, making eye contact with the bartender eyeing her with thinly veiled intrigue and mild disdain, making no effort to hide that she was listening in on the conversation. She breaks contact first, and looks to the corner to see the small woman sat on the piano stool still playing a leisurely tune, a simple melody that only required one hand as the other one propped her chin up just enough so she could study Mina. She hoped she could see the hint of a smile sitting on her pretty face, and that it wasn’t just a trick of the dim lighting. 

Each of the three women are staring at her intently, trying to take a read on her and figure out just what in the hell a girl like her was doing in a place like this. 

She was trying to solve the same thing herself.

“I heard this place was safe.”

Mina speaks for the first time, voice a little softer than she intended and she injects a little bravery in her tone.

“That if I danced, I would be safe here.”

The woman across from her looks her up and down again, the hard set expression on her face softening ever so slightly.

“You would be.” She hums, the sound low and throaty. Mina tries not to imagine what other noises her pretty little mouth could procure, what sounds she could tease out from such a slender, smooth neck. 

She wondered how her name would sound spilling over plump, kiss-swollen lips, and her fist clenches subconsciously.

Maybe the underlying threat of danger was present after all, in the subtle muscles that moved under tanned skin with every slight shift of an arm, or in the tendon straining in her neck when the woman opposite her tilted her head just so.

“This place is a refuge,” she begins, voice low and her words slow, “A sanctuary. A home for talented women just trying to make an honest living.” 

She stands up suddenly, chair scraping backwards in protest. Sturdy arms place themselves on the table, and Mina finds her face bare inches from the others as she leans domineeringly above her. 

“They dance because they don’t have anything else. Because letting desperate men indulge their far-fetched fantasies for a couple of nights a week helps put food on the table and then some.” 

Mina dares not to blink, forces herself not to retreat back into a safe shell even as warm breath fans over her face at their proximity.

“It’s dangerous. This life, it’s dangerous. And people don’t just willingly choose to throw themselves into the lion's den because they ‘ _ want to dance.’ _ So tell me -  _ why _ are you here?”

There’s a large part of her brain screaming at her to close the few, scant inches between them and bite down hard on those tantalizingly plump lips. She ignores it in favour of the second loudest voice in her head, and hopes the frantic flitting off her eyes across the woman’s face was perceived as nervousness and not arousal. 

“I want to be safe.” She whispers into the non-existent space between them, and she watches as determined eyes scour her face for any signs of deceit. The piano has stopped, lazy notes trickling to a halt and Mina knows that all eyes are on her; she can  _ feel _ the burning holes on her back even as she never looks away from the woman in front of her.

There’s a few, tension filled moments where everything is still. She hears a soft clink as the bartender resumes her activities, cleaning the glasses diligently and a single, high piano note disrupts the silence once more, the languid melody shifting into something a little more complex and serene. 

The woman in front of her still hasn’t moved, but there’s a small, accepting smile gracing her features, and Mina desperately hopes this means she can breathe easy again. She pushes herself upright, standing straight up across the table and she extends a hand amicably. 

“So we’ll keep you safe.” She says warmly, as though it was the easiest decision in the world, and it’s only years of rigorous discipline that holds the tears at bay that had threatened to fall as soon as she walked inside this building. 

“You can call me Jihyo.” Mina fumbles clumsily, her own hand reaching out to clasp with the other’s, and she marvels absently at the unexpected strength in her grip.

“Mina.” She replies with a gratuitous smile. 

Jihyo pulls her hand away and Mina immediately misses the feel of her worn palm against her own. Both of her hands move behind her back, shoving themselves firmly in the backpocket of her jeans, and Mina would be lying if she said the woman in front of her didn’t present a  _ very _ attractive image. 

“So Mina,  _ can  _ you dance?”

She chuckles, low and genuine. She doesn’t miss the quirk of Jihyo’s lip in response.

“What do you think?”

Eyes dripping with intrigue give her a leisurely glance over.

“I think,” she says; slow, and a little husky - low enough in timbre that it makes the hairs on her arms stand upright unexpectedly, “that you’re going to surprise me.”

——-

“Sooooo,” Mina trails awkwardly, hand wrapped around the barely sipped glass of scotch. The bartender barely looks up from the glass she’s wiping down. Mina swears she’s been cleaning that same glass since she got here.

She’s cute. A little too cute a face to be working in a place like this, Mina thinks, though she’d never tell her this. She looks young too, barely looks old enough to be out of high school - let alone pouring strangers drinks behind the bar at a strip club.

The bartender places the glass underneath the bar. Picks out another one and begins to go through the ministrations again.

“Have you been here long?”

She doesn’t stop wiping down the glass, but she does glance up long enough to actually acknowledge Mina’s presence. There’s a hint of a smirk playing on her lips - this little bitch is enjoying her discomfort and awkwardness.

“Longer than you think.”

Maybe Jihyo had the right idea by getting the girl to make her this drink in the first place. She takes a lengthy gulp, wishing that the other, intimidating woman hadn’t have disappeared upstairs to sort out some paperwork. It looks like she’ll need it.

Light floods the room as the front door opens, disappearing just as quickly with quick stepping high heeled clicks tapping against the floor. Mina doesn’t turn her head to look, keeps her eyes down at the (admittedly) immaculately polished bar top even when a body sits itself on the stool next to hers.

“Surprise me today, Chaeyoungie.”

Mina glances up in time to see the bartender’s eyes widen at the affectionate nickname. It’s cute, a pretty name to suit a pretty face and she’s sure she sees the hint of a flush streak across full cheeks before the bartender turns away to reach for a bottle on the top shelf. 

She hasn’t even looked at the woman looking at her curiously yet, but she can feel the pull she has. Expensive perfume blanketed her senses as soon as she’d taken the seat, the other woman’s posture assured and confident. 

Long fingers pull at her own, stroking the inside of her palm like she was trying to gauge something. Mina tried not to jolt in shock, but there’s something electric in the slow scratch of short nails on her skin. 

“You’re not a working girl.” 

Her voice is a punch to the gut, tempered and calculated and Mina imagines that this woman is  _ very _ used to getting her own way. It’s not a question, but Mina feels like she’s being interrogated.

“What do you mean?”

“Your skin.” She hums, punctuating her point with another swipe of her thumb. “It’s not worn, or calloused. You’re soft - you’ve never spent a day on the stage in your life, have you?”

She swallows the indignation crawling up her throat.

“I have-“

“No,” She’s cut off before you can barely begin, but the tone is soft enough that it doesn’t sting like it should, “I meant that stage. Up there.” 

She nods her head towards the unlit front of the room. She can see the stretched length of the pole at the forefront, gleaming and polished even in the dim glow of the lights from the bar. She looks back and tries not to suck in a breath at the beautiful woman looking straight at her - large, piercing eyes reading Mina’s response before she could even unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth.

“I-I...haven’t.” She admits quietly, exhaling softly. The other woman nods expectantly. 

“So why are you here?”

She almost breaks during the silence that slips between them, engulfing and demanding and all the while the ridiculously attractive woman is staring at her with questions in her eyes that Mina doesn’t want to answer. The sound of glass sliding across the bartop affords her a moment to breathe when pretty eyes flit down to the freshly made drink in her hand instead.

“She joined today.” The bartender, Chaeyoung she assumes, unless her name is genuinely Chaeyoungie, explains. She leans against the bartop with a towel thrown over her shoulder, arms folded as she looks between the two woman.

“Jihyo hired her?”

Chaeyoung nods wordlessly.

The other woman hums thoughtfully, shifting her fingers so that she gripped Mina’s hand in a firm handshake instead.

“I’m Sana.” 

Mina shakes her hand back, a little stunned at how quickly her stance shifted from questioning to accepting. But the other woman is smiling at her warmly, and she finds she’s having a hard time thinking about doing anything other than smiling back. 

“Be kind to her,” Chaeyoung says bemusedly, hand running through her short hair to mess it up a little more, “she’s new to this.”

“As if I couldn’t tell,” Sana rolls her eyes, but there’s no malice in it. Her hand finally pulls away from Mina’s, and the girl has to resist the urge to chase after it. 

There’s something captivating about the other woman. Like, she could chase away all your fears and worries, if only for a night. 

It’s tempting.

Mina watches as she lifts the small glass to her lips, head tilted back as she drains the entire contents of it in one, smooth gulp. Her eyes trace the swell of her slender throat as she does so, and she knows that Chaeyoung does too, if the inconspicuous cough that follows is anything to go by. Sly eyes catch Mina’s before she can look away and a knowing smirk settles comfortably on her face.

“Thanks Chaeng.” she pushes the now empty glass back towards the bartender who takes it wordlessly, a slight nod in lieu of a response as she places it at the other end of the bar.

There’s a lot of silent conversations in this place, Mina notices. It’s all small gestures and slight movements; the quirk of a brow or the tug of a lip, pointed glances or small nods of acknowledgement. It’s intimate - as though the people in this place have known each other for longer than Mina could ever hope to comprehend, and well enough to read the smallest change in stature as a sign of worry or trouble. It’s a language as unfamiliar to her as everything else about this place, but, like everything else, she’s just going to have to learn.

A finger presses under her chin to tilt her head up. The contact startles her, but not as much as the fact that Sana’s face was bare inches from her own, close enough that she could feel warm breath laced with the scent of rum fanning across her cheeks. She holds her there, time passing slower than Mina could ever remember as she just  _ watches _ her - is she waiting for something? 

Mina waits with her.

It works - Sana removes her finger slowly, dragging along the length of her jaw before settling back onto her seat more comfortably. There’s a knowing smile teasing the corners of her lips, and she raises an eyebrow as she rests her face against her hand.

“Try and keep up sweetheart,” there’s a hand on her knee, index finger pressing against the inside slightly, “it’ll do nobody any good for you to get lost in a place like this.”

“I said be kind to her.”

“This is being kind. Out of all of us you should know the dangers of being babied in this kind of work.”

Chaeyoung’s eyes narrow dangerously, a few taut moments stretching between her and the provocative woman to her side before she sighs heavily, throwing her head back and running her fingers through her hair frustratedly. 

“I know.” She sighs, heavy and weighted. Whatever’s in Mina’s drink does little to disrupt the ball of unease that’s worked its way into her stomach. 

She takes small, measured sips. 

“But if Jihyo said yes, then it’s our job to make sure she doesn’t go into this blind.” 

Mina snaps to attention at the mention of the other woman’s name. Sana notices too, but just quirks an eyebrow at her silently before smiling against her palm. 

“Do you trust Jihyo that much?” Her mouth opens before she realises it, thoughts spilling out and hanging in the air between them like a dirty curse. 

Chaeyoung and Sana look at her cryptically, before turning to glance at each other. There’s history; something a little painful and raw in the way Chaeyoung searches Sana’s face, something desperate and fleeting in the way Sana stares back. But mostly there’s an undeniable sense of pride and trust as they turn back to her in sync.

“With our lives.”

  
  


——

  
  


“All you have to do today is sit, and watch.” Mina’s still sat at the bar, listening and watching Chaeyoung as the club gets closer to opening. 

Sana, as it turns out, was a dancer - not that Mina couldn’t tell from the way she held herself and the unbelievable tone of her legs, or the fact that the other woman walked around like sin personified. She’d left not long after their encounter at the bar, disappearing behind a back door to prepare for her set later this evening.

She’d walked away with a wide smile and a promising wink, asking Mina to watch extra closely -  _ ‘y’know, for tips _ .’

A few more women had arrived in between then and now, more dancers who regarded her with curious eyes and polite waves before disappearing behind the same door as Sana. Some stopped at the bar to order drinks, making easy conversation and flirting with Chaeyoung familiarly. She wasn’t sure if it was some sort of game - who can make the pretty girl blush the fastest - but one of them leans in, Joy she introduced herself as, and says something particularly risque that has a blush spreading all the way to the tops of Chaeyoung’s ears. Mina can’t blame her - she was having a hard time breathing herself with the way the other dancer leans across the bar top, dress dipping low enough to expose a dangerous amount of cleavage and a wicked grin in place to boot.

She had a  _ lot _ to learn about this place.

Other people arrived too. A woman who appeared to be a little older than herself hugged her body as she walks straight past the bar to sit next to the ginger haired girl tuning the piano. She could be a dancer, Mina thinks, eyeing the length of her form as she walks, but somehow she doubts it. 

“Nayeon,” Chaeyoung cups her hands to her mouth, shouting across the length of the room, “do you want your gin now or later?” 

The woman whirls around, hand to her chest in surprise before dropping just as quickly. She’s beautiful - small, pretty face, with wide, large eyes that fit just right and disappear into crescent slits when she smiles brightly at the loud bartender.

“Later Chaeng!” She hollers back, pausing briefly before she turns back around to look Mina up and down. 

Apparently, it was an unwritten rule that every single woman in this place was otherworldly gorgeous. And apparently incredibly cryptic and cautious. 

She slings an arm around the tiny pianists shoulders, leaning on her comfortably as they point at the sheet music and talk about the night ahead. Nayeon gestures towards the stage and Mina follows the movement, noticing the lone microphone stand that was tucked away in the corner.

So she was a singer.

Fitting.

The front door opens again and she hears the squeak of sneakers instead of the demanding clack of heels, Chaeyoung perking up in excitement at the sound.

“You’re not performing tonight.”

“No,” the new woman responds with a chuckle, sliding into the seat next to Mina that Sana had occupied earlier, “but Sana messaged me and said something about a new girl. Thought I’d swing by and introduce myself.”

“Speaking of, hey - my name’s Momo.”

Momo is bright, and more importantly friendly. There’s a small hand waiting expectantly and Mina clasps it with a genuine smile.

“Mina.” 

Momo smiles wider at her soft tone with tired eyes, like she’d just crawled out of bed only moments before arriving.

“You should be in bed Hirai, I know you worked overnight at that stupid burger joint.”

Momo waves away her complaints, leaning on the bartop.

“I slept plenty Chaeng, it was about time I woke up anyway.”

“You work somewhere else?”

Mina wishes her curiosity wouldn’t bubble over so uncontrollably, but there’s something about the sleepy woman next to her that says she won’t be too irritated with any prying.

“Just to get by. I only perform here once or twice a week depending on what the other girls are doing. The extra money is always nice.”

“Maybe you’d have more if you didn’t spend your days off flirting with the other dancers by buying them drinks.”

“Maybe I’d have more if you let me have a few freebies from time to time, asshole.”

They bicker like that for a while, weightless and spirited despite the droopy lilt of Momo’s eyelids and Chaeyoung bustling around behind the bar and pulling the bottles of liquor down from the top shelf.

“Jeongyeon thinks she’s so fucking funny putting them up here,” she huffs as she crawls down from the bartop, eyes narrowing when she catches Mina and Momo trying to stifle amused smiles, “we’ll see who’s laughing when I put absinthe in her coffee.”

Mina perks up at the unfamiliar name, folding the corner of the paper of the little book in her head just so she could come back to it if it’s ever bought up again. There’s been a lot of folded pages in the past few hours, little creases and certain names underlined and highlighted in bold so she can go back over them when she gets home and try and assess who’s where in the social hierarchy of this place.

(So far it goes something like this:

  1. Jihyo
  2. Everybody else
  3. Chaeyoung



There’s an age old depth of knowledge in the bartender’s eyes though. Maybe she’ll put her with the rest, but it’s kind of hard to do that when every single dancer so far has babied the fuck out of the younger woman.)

She takes another sip of her (third) drink as Momo throws out another friendly quip to the bartender who retorts back just as sarcastically. Chaeyoung refused to charge her for any of them, something that Momo had been grumbling and griping about for the better part of the past half hour, until the tiny bartender finally relented with an eye roll and slid her a shot of something transparent that made Momo’s face crumple when she threw it back. She gets a whiff as the other girl slams the glass down, nose wrinkling at the strong burn lingering in her nose after - and that was just from the smell. She dreads to think what it just did to Momo’s throat.

The older girl turns to her with pursed lips and scrunched up eyes, gesturing between Mina and the mostly full drink resting loosely in her hand with a firm finger.

“Might wanna knock that back before the patrons come in.”

“Are they… bad?” 

Momo laughs, shaking her head good naturedly and fanning her alcohol flushed cheeks. 

“Oh no, our customers are actually pretty great. It’s just once they get in the show starts.”

Mina tilts her head in confusement.

“I need to be drunk for the show?” Momo nods enthusiastically, head lolling forward in slow, lethargic movements. Chaeyoung steps towards the pair of them with a scoff, taking Momo’s now empty glass and eyeing Mina’s tauntingly. 

She throws it back, smooth and practiced with barely a trace of a wince as neat scotch burns a searing trail in the back of her throat. If Chaeyoung’s impressed, she doesn’t show it - just grins a wide, toothy smile that carves dimples into her cheeks as she takes her glass along with Momo’s.

“I wouldn’t get too drunk for the show, one of the dancers will probably try to take you home.” 

Mina’s eyes widen.

“Unless you’re okay with that, but some of them can be a little… intense.”

She tilts her head up, assured and aloof, and she’s sure she sees a bemused glint in the young bartender’s eye at the display of bravado.

“I can look after myself.”

Momo snickers into the sleeve of her old hoodie. Chaeyoung grins again as she turns away, rag in hand as she begins cleaning the dirty glasses, and for the first time since she stepped foot in this club, she was starting to have second thoughts about this whole plan.

“We’ll see about that.”

——

Things were going well.

If, by well, Mina meant that two seconds into the first set she was left open mouthed with her jaw on the floor and Momo had to reach over with fumbling fingers and pick it up for her. Chaeyoung clapped a hand on her shoulder before walking off to serve a customer, something akin to sympathy (maybe empathy? She’s not sure) on her face as she busies herself with taking an order.

“D’ya see why I said you hafta be drunk, now?” Momo slurs next to her, eyes glued to the stage and a hand on Mina’s thigh to steady herself. 

And Mina did. Because if she’d have been sober, she’d have noticed every single movement executed in painstaking precision, every single look that lingered and every little smirk that felt like fire branding itself into her skin. The music was slow, sensual. Captivating, perfectly chosen to match the slow rhythm of the dancer’s hips as she ground against the pole to the muted delight of the onlookers. 

She didn’t even know the woman on the stage but she wanted to. Wanted to fall into whatever spell she was weaving, sinking faster and deeper until she could never get out. It’s the mystery and intrigue - the way the dark haired woman holds herself and looks down at the crowd with deliberate, half-lidded eyes, mouth slightly agape as a torturously slow wave rolls through her body.

The set ends in a flourish, a tense, final look over her shoulder with a piercing stare before she struts off the stage, the final pulsating beats of the accompanying track fading out to the slow notes of the grand piano in the corner. Raucous applause followed with every confident step before she disappeared behind the curtain, dying out so that the crowd could appreciate the small pianist sending megawatt smiles to the crowd.

Mina shakes off the stupor she’d worked herself into. 

“There’s another performance between the girls?”

“Yeah. Dubu plays and Nayeon sings, usually. It’s a good way to keep the crowd entertained and give the girls time to prepare between their sets.” 

Mina nods.

“Smart.”

The hand on her thigh presses a little more firmly as Momo sidles up against her, the scent of gin washing over her as she does so. 

“If the first girl has you like that, then you’re done for Myoui,” she laughs at herself, before turning in her seat to lean over the bar. Mina shoots a hand out to steady her before she falls off the stool. “Hey Chaeng, you ever heard of a lesbian in a strip club before?”

The bartender levels her with a deadpan stare.

“Momo,  _ we’re  _ lesbians in a strip club.” 

“I’m actually bi.” Mina murmurs into her drink, half hoping that neither of them hear her but Chaeyoung turns to her with sympathetic eyes.

“That’s even worse cupcake, we have a night for male strippers too. And they’re some of the most beautiful beings I’ve ever seen - next to the women, of course.” 

“I’ll drink to that!” Momo declares loudly, whining disgruntledly when she discovers her glass to be empty. “Chaaaaaeng!”

The bartender shakes her head firmly.

“Nope. You know how pissed off Sana is when you get too drunk. You wanna piss her off after her star night?” 

A dramatic sigh. “Noooooo, I guess.” 

“Good.” 

There’s a surge of customers at the bar now that the first performance has ended, each one waiting impatiently and Chaeyoung turns away with a flourish.

“Duty calls, ladies.”

Which leaves Mina and the sullen drunk woman frowning at the bartop next to her.

“Soooo, if that was only the first set,” she asks nonchalantly, fingers drumming around the side of her glass, “then how many more are there?” 

Momo sits up straighter, levelling her with a teasing, knowing look before pausing to think. “There’s usually about ten performances in a night, and then the grand finale after.” 

Mina swallows unsteadily.

“The grand finale?”

Momo grins.

“Yeah. Usually our best or most popular dancer of the night. Keeps the patrons waiting all the way til the end.”

“Are you trying to tell me that first performer wasn’t already one of the best?”

“Oh she absolutely is,” Momo laughs, squinting at the glass of water Chaeng slid into her hands as she passed by them with a wink, “but Irene likes performing early because it means she can do her homework backstage after.”

“College?”

“Pre-med.”

Mina lets out a surprised little ‘huh’ at the revelation. Momo raises an eyebrow as she takes a sip of her water, brows scrunching together as soon as the water hits her mouth. 

(Somehow Mina thinks there’s a lot more to each of these women than they let on.) 

“So who’s the final girl?”

Momo grins against her glass.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Mina has a feeling she already knows the answer, if Chaeyoung’s slip of tongue earlier was anything to to by, and the wicked, anticipation filled glances Momo shot at her during sets - just watching and taking in just how increasingly flustered and bothered she was getting. 

The atmosphere of the club was,  _ different, _ to how she was expecting it to be. She’d heard this place wasn’t like other strip clubs; that the girls were actually cared for and prioritised over the amount of money that could be made, and that any unruly behaviour resulted in a ban - no exceptions. But to actually sit there and partake in the audience, to see the dutiful and vigilant way the bouncers placed around the room surveyed the crowd fixated on the girls on stage and the few walking around and flirting teasingly, was something she couldn’t really imagine. 

She catches sight of a familiar face passing by a few tables away, serving drinks to a table of grateful customers and making small talk with them and her breath gets caught in her throat.

“Jihyo works the bar floor?”

Momo nods drunkenly.

“She likes to be down here. Likes to keep an eye on everything and make sure her girls are okay.”

Mina doesn’t miss the way Momo says ‘her girls’, watching as the older women confidently engaged with anyone in her path, smiling at the bouncers and referring to the customers by name. She’s confident, assured - inherently attractive just by the way her eyes glance around the fairly packed seating area and grinning at the women (Roa? Mina thinks Momo said was her name?) crawling on the stage when she aims a flying kiss in her direction. 

-add connecting scene dumbass-

Soon enough turns out to be two hours and eight different performanced later, not that Mina was complaining. Every single set was 

-finish scene w/ sana’s performance, god is a woman, sana coming up to the bar and doing a suicide shot w/ mina, mina “oh no”-

-mina wake up w/ a hangover and like 7 text messages, two from momo, one from jihyo and three from chaeng. (ignores the last one) doesnt remember making plans to meet momo at the burger shack but apparently its in 30 minutes and she has to run-

-meets momo, they talk about last night, momo: couldn’t take your eyes off my girlfriend, huh? mina IMMEDIATELY being like ‘oh fuck’ but momo laughs and explains that it’s cool, theyre open, and that sana already has a little thing for mina. momo texting jihyo. jihyo always keeps tabs on where they are. habit. jihyo asks them to come to the club-

> 


	4. [MISANA] home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> basically a small draft about sana learning Mina's love language. tooth rottingly sweet
> 
> you can tell I wrote some of these like 2 years ago jesus, also enjoy my notes again xox

Mina likes to be babied.

It was a fact that all of the girls took a while to get used to; not for any particular malicious reason, but solely because, well, it was  _ Mina.  _ Mina who, on multiple occasions, preferred the sanctity of her own room over spending time with the others (which the girls understood and respected; living a constant life in the limelight was draining, and nobody judged the others for how they needed to spend their downtime), and Mina who, on first appearance, seemed calm and aloof and independent enough that nobody really expected her to think more like a child than she lets on.

But they’re all still children. Even Nayeon, who had been on the receiving end of far too many retirement jokes after reaching the ripe old age of twenty-three, all children who had been thrust into the spotlight and adulthood and into decisions they might have been entirely too young and inexperienced to fully understand the nature and complexity of. 

But they aren’t alone. And they’re still growing, and learning, and still making mistakes and fixing them along the way. 

Sana’s made more than she can count.

Some small and largely inconsequential. She didn’t screw the cap on the orange juice tight enough last night and when Jeongyeon had fancied a drink in the morning it had ended up on the floor rather than in her glass. She kept missing that fourth step in the choreography for one of their b-sides no matter how hard she practiced. 

(“You’ll get it soon, try again.” Momo seems tired but she wipes any traces of exhaustion away with a fond smile as she restarts the song on the sound system, moving quickly back into formation to run through the routine again.

She lets herself get absorbed in music and dancing for the eighteenth time that night, the others resting back at the dorm but Momo still diligently at her side. 

She doesn’t miss a single step this time.)

Other mistakes are bigger, and with significantly more consequences. 

There’s a few that spring to mind, but none pull on her conscience quite like not learning Mina’s language of love sooner.

They’re nine girls. All unique, all of them having entirely different ways of expressing affection and emotions, all of them needing different ways to heal and cope. Not that this was a problem for Nayeon, Jeongyeon or Jihyo - all three of which seemed to have some sort of invisible string connecting their brains that made them know the other’s thoughts and moods just by a single look. Six years is a long time though, her own relationship with Momo a stark example of just how well they’d grown to know each other. 

It was just a matter of learning how the others girls worked; what made them tick and what made them stop, and knowing what to do and how to say (and sometimes knowing not to say anything at all). 

It was an art. A finely honed craft where they could speak in each others tongues, or at the very least understand what they were trying to say or convey with minimal conflict in the way. 

Mina’s language had been deceptively easy to learn. 

Unsurprising really, considering how similar it was to her own. 

Except, whereas Sana was forward and upfront about the ways she needed to heal, Mina was quiet and apprehensive - a foot dragging wistfully on the floor, the hesitant extension of a hand to tug at someone’s shirt that largely goes unnoticed in the mess and the rabble of eight other voices and bodies. Too polite for her own good, really. Never one to ask for fear of overstepping or misinterpreting the situation.

Sana had no such fears or hesitations, widely known for exploiting any opening of affection that she could find, squeezing her way into an open pair of arms or pressing closely against a warm side. She also had a reputation for lavishing the affection she received in tenfold, and for having a natural sort of magnetism that drew even the most cautious people in.

Including Mina.

The signs were obvious, had she been paying close attention to them. And she did - she really did try to take care of this new and closed off trainee, knowing the difficulties of leaving every part of your old life behind and starting something new. Momo had too, the two of them taking it upon themselves to pseudo adopt her as their own, easing her into the harsh foreign environment with as much ease and lack of hurt as possible.

They couldn’t shield her from every hardship, but they were patient ears and easy conversation after a long day, and - slowly but surely, the younger girl began to open up just a little bit more each day. 

The clinginess had come as a surprise.

Skinship was as natural to Sana as breathing, so wrapping an arm around a waist or grabbing hold of an empty hand was just another part of a daily routine. Choreography had decided that the ending pose meant Sana stood just to Mina’s side, so when the song faded out to the final beat and the studio was filled with heavy pants and soft claps at their first successful run through with no mistakes, it made complete sense to thread her fingers between Mina’s.

She’d blame it on jubilation; excitement and relief at finally nailing their most challenging choreography to date and wanting to share it with the person next to ber, expressing her emotions in the best way she knew how.

The younger girl had stiffened automatically at the unexpected contact, looking between their conjoined hands and the lower half of Sana’s face questioningly (no eye contact, she still couldn’t handle eye contact), looking for some sort of explanation or ulterior motive.

All she got in response was a blinding smile, an out of breath gasp as the older girl tries to refill her lungs and a light squeeze of the hand in her own. 

“Good job, Minari.” 

The nickname was new and unfamiliar but Sana couldn’t explain why it felt so  _ right _ rolling off her tongue, taking note of the slight blush adorning Mina’s cheeks (it was probably from practice, was  _ definitely _ from practice if she thinks about it) and the small, unshakeable smile that stayed on her lips even as they broke apart and went through the choreography again. 

They finished again and Sana just smiled when a slender hand trailed it’s way down her wrist to slot into her own. She didn’t miss the fact that she could keenly feel a warm body pressing against her own as they stood side by side, or the exhilarated sigh of relief that courses through the younger girl as she relaxed against her. 

Sana writes another thing on the mental list of notes she’s transcribed for Mina in her head, adds; 

  * Really pretty, especially when she smiles
  * Likes affection
  * Likes to be reassured



  
  


Sana could do something about all three of these things. Made a habit out of telling Mina how pretty she looked casually; commented on her outfit, her hairstyle, the way her eyes disappeared when she laughed  _ really _ hard at something goofy Momo did and her face splits into a wide smile that shows more gum than teeth because it  _ was _ adorable. It’s one of the cutest things Sana can ever recall seeing, and no matter how many times she told her, made a point out of telling Mina just how pretty she was - she still blushed. Still smiled that small, inescapable smile even though she tried to fight it and her cheeks were stained pink. 

They were far more compatible than Sana ever realised, if she’s being honest. As much as she liked the younger girl, she never imagined fitting against her so easily, for Mina to accept  _ her _ language of love so readily and complacently. But it made complete sense.

Sana was a force of love and affection. Gave without asking, just wrapped her arms around warm bodies and tucked her head against stiff shoulders, squeezing until all that tension melted away and she felt a pair of arms come to settle around her own waist with a sigh of relief. 

And Mina was more than ready to take that, to let everything Sana had fill up the spaces where she couldn’t quite bring herself to ask. Too new, too uncomfortable, too shy. But not with Sana. 

Maybe that’s just how it was intended.

The word ‘fate’ had been thrown around a lot in this life she’s tried so hard to forge. So many faces and voices full of hope, and despair, and desperation to be one of the lucky few that succeed. The word had never felt comfortable in her mouth though, sitting on her tongue like a lead weight was forcing it down and back into her chest because really - fate? Not a chance.

And yet the word seemed so synonymous to Mina. 

  
  
  


  
  


fluffy

arms open wide

“welcome home mitang”

big smiles

hoodie?? all my fics are oversized hoodies buT I DONT CARE

sticky notes on the fridge

sana fall asleep on the couch??? mina on a late schedule???


	5. [JITZU] The little lake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was, in essence, a story about how Tzuyu grows up and falls in love with the moon. Out of all the fics I abandoned, I think I regret this one more because I adored the premise and I had the whole thing planned but just... lost the spark, ya know? Anyway there are a lot of lines in this that I was really proud of lol

Tzuyu's father always told her to be careful of the little lake in the forest.

She didn't know why, exactly. It wasn't particularly deep and the water was clear - clean and beautiful when the sun hits the surface on chilled winter mornings, rays refracting through the water to touch the rocks that lined the very bottom of the lake. It was still water, too, and she could swim considerably well from years of playing in the river down by her Grandma’s farm. 

It doesn't look dangerous. Not a bit, but her father warns her all the same. With gruff, stern words and pointed fingers gesturing towards the forest that she's seen and heard a hundred times before, her mother nodding in absent agreement as she'd continue knitting another blanket.

_ Stay away from the lake. _

She's an obedient child. A good daughter - always listening to her parents and never acting out like the way the parents of the other children in the village spoke about. She always did as she was told.

So she stayed away.

But, try as hard as she might, she couldn't seem to get the thought of the mysterious, forbidden lake out of her mind. Every night - after she'd blown out the candle and tucked the bookmark safely into her book - she'd burrow under the covers and try to sleep. She could never sleep on her back or her left side, so she would inevitably toss and turn until she'd end up facing the window that backed out onto the forest that led to the lake. The moon would peer curiously at her through the heavy boughs in the trees, luminescent light spilling over her face as she tried to chase the drowsiness hiding in the back of her consciousness. 

It almost felt like a silent conversation. Every night the moon would ask her why she sleeps, hanging overhead the treeline just above where the lake is nestled in the forest. And the wind would whistle through the old rafters in the attic, speaking in a language Tzuyu had no way of knowing with the old trees groaning amicably in the background.

She never knew what to say, so every night she would whisper good night and watch the moon until sleep would come to her slowly. Just a little, and then all at once; slipping into dreams of swimming in a lake filled with moonlight. 

It felt like it was calling to her.

But that was silly, for the moon is just the moon and a thousand miles away from her. Untouchable. And she is just an ordinary village girl destined to marry the son of the baker, or the fisherman, or maybe even the son of a soldier. 

It would be nice to be the moon, she thinks. So far out of reach.

But one night the moon hangs low enough in the sky that it almost seems to touch the surface of the little lake, and it’s the largest she’s ever seen the moon as it seems to stretch and take up the entire night sky. And it’s bright,  _ so _ bright that it lights up everything as far as her eyes can see, bathing the tips of the trees and the forest path below in a pale blue illuminating glow. 

It's much too pretty to fall asleep. She pulls back the sheets of her bed slowly, easing her weight onto the floor so as not to make the old wood creak underneath her and alert her parents to the fact she was not yet asleep. Takes small, measured steps, tentatively tiptoeing over to the window and sinking to her knees when she gets there, fiddling with the latch to push it open carefully.

The cool September breeze washes over her but it's not unpleasant, Tzuyu sucking in a sharp breath as she settles more heavily into the floor. Her arms come up to lay against the windowsill and her head rests on top of them easily, tilted to the side as she looks up at the moon.

A contented sigh escapes before she knows it, feeling completely at ease. Even from here it almost looks like all she has to do is reach out and she can touch the moon, rest her palm against the surface and exist, just for a while. 

If she just… reaches out…

Her fingers splay out in front of her, moonlight slipping through the gaps and casting shadows in between, angling her hand so that she can squint with one eye. 

The light gets a little brighter. 

Tzuyu frowns at the ever growing intensity, until the light is almost blinding and she has to blink rapidly just to see, a brightness that could rival the sun on the warmest summer's day filling the entirety of the inky black sky. It doesn't stop, until it swallows the stars that paint the night and fills her whole room with iridescent moonlight.

It almost hurts to look, squinting through her fingertips as all the light seems to gather above the lake, a gentle, swirling mass of silvers and blues that intertwine intricately and precisely, wispy strands that seemed to stretch all the way from the moon to the forest on the ground. Like a tunnel, or a bridge she thinks, connecting the land to the sky in an instant. 

Her eyes must be playing tricks on her, for there's something dark falling  _ inside _ the light, faster than humanly possible for her eyes to keep track of. She rubs at them stubbornly, but the shape’s still there, moving faster and closer towards the Earth. 

It might be a rock. She'd heard tales of great lumps of rock that fall from the sky in a blaze of fire and smoke, hitting the Earth and shattering the land around it for miles to see. Her mother said they were fallen stars coming back to Earth after an eternity in the sky, finally coming back home to find new life and spread the stories of the stars. 

Her father said it was nonsense. That angels and falling stars existed no more than humans could fly, or animals could speak. 

But they did speak. Just not in a tongue that Tzuyu could understand. 

So maybe her father was wrong about everything else, too.

It got closer and closer, a burning star streaking through the sky and hurtling towards the little lake in the forest. A bright light: a brilliant flash of white and blue and silver as it disappeared behind the treeline, and then-

Nothing. 

Tzuyu blinked in confusement. 

The sky was completely black. 

No moonlight. No stars. No moon hanging in the sky.

All gone. 

But just beyond the treeline, somewhere deep in the forest where Tzuyu couldn't quite see from her window, there was a light. Streaking through the branches and drenching her room in subdued silvery light, casting shadows against the wall behind her. A light which, if she squinted with all her might, tried her  _ very _ hardest to see where it came from, looked like it was coming from the lake. 

Tzuyu was an obedient girl. A good child - the sort of daughter parents would wish for and would pray to have her temperament and compliance. 

But she was also just that. A child. 

And the small part of her brain telling her to investigate the strange light absolutely deafened the part that held the consequences of getting caught.

And it's the night that aids her first minor rebellion, wrapping around and holding her tight as her small leg dangles over the window ledge onto the rain soaked grass below. The other leg follows, toes wiggling as the dew coats her feet and she smoothes out the creases of her night dress. The air is cool, the gentle September breeze playing in her hair and rustling the hem of her dress as she edges her way towards the forest. 

She lets the light guide her through the trees and past the brambles and thorns of the unkempt pathway, treading only where the ground was clear. She should have put more thought into this, should have grabbed her shoes and something to cover her shoulders because despite the warmth of the night there’s still an odd chill in the air, but stopping for a moment would have meant she’d hesitate about whether or not to be out here, and as she gets closer any doubts that were lingering in her mind were completely washed away by what she could see. 

Right there, over by the small wooden platform, was a girl. Or, not a girl, not really; but a young woman sitting on the edge of the derelict dock, legs hanging down and her toes brushing the surface of the still water and her face tilted up to the sky. 

She looks like a painting in one of the biggest churches in the biggest cities. In fact, Tzuyu's  _ sure _ that she couldn't be anything other than an angel crafted by God himself. Far too beautiful to be human, even more beautiful than the pastor's daughter (and she was most  _ definitely _ the prettiest girl Tzuyu had seen in her ten years of life). 

Even her dress couldn't have been crafted by human hands. Long and flowing from her shoulders to her knees, loose fitting and seemingly softer than any material Tzuyu had known. A pure, brilliant white, accentuated by the rich, sun kissed tone of her skin and the dark, obsidian sheen of hair that brushed the tops of her shoulders. 

But her face… her face was defined, and beautiful. Even from the side, with her head peeking out from behind a tree and trying not to get caught by the stranger, Tzuyu could tell that. Features that the women in the village could only pray for, ones that the poets in the palace would write sonnets about. The kind of face a king would wage a war for, and send a thousand soldiers to defend on her travels. 

The kind of face that had Tzuyu edging forward into the clearing, away from the hidden safety of the trees watching over her and shrouding her out of sight. 

She’s careful. Every footstep tentative, and well placed; taking the utmost care not to make a sound as she approaches, feeling the earth underneath her feet with every step and not recognizing the taste of the air around her as it fills her lungs. There’s something  _ more _ that she can’t explain in every measured breath she takes. Something she’s never felt before, much less has the words to describe and most certainly has nothing remotely similar to compare to. 

She’d heard whispers in the village, though. Spilling over aged lips in hushed tones and fearful murmurs, a taboo that the elders had only heard stories about, passed down from their families and grandparents in the same, unspeakable manner that they now spoke in to their children and grandchildren in. Had heard it screamed from the preachers in the marketplace in the capital, scornful and seething as though the very word burns as it drips from their snarled, twisted lips. Has seen it in her mother’s eyes, her hands; in every single stitch in every blanket she creates, only to fade when her father’s hands burn and destroy everything he touches.

Has seen it on the pages of the small, tattered book her mother has hidden underneath the floorboards of the pantry, scrawled on the paper in illegible haste, crossed out and rewritten a thousand times before. 


	6. [SAMO] Old soul, new soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr: sana is an old soul who's been waiting for her soul mate for hundreds of years. momo is a new soul in her first life cycle.
> 
> uh i'm gonna post my rough?? outline of where i wanteed this story to go in the chapter notes at the end if anyone's curious. i really should have stopped trying to plan entire fics around single quotes and sentences i wanted to happen lol

The town doesn’t look so bad when she’s perched on the top of her dad’s old toyota camry. 

It might be because it’s so far away. A sea of steady lights concentrated in a tiny cluster at the bottom of the hill she’d driven to the top of; fixed, unwavering. 

Unchanging. 

She sucks in a lungful of cool air and chooses to look up at the stars instead. They don’t do a lot either - if anything, their existence is even more solidified than this archaic, dusty, lost-in-time town, but the brightness fluctuates and they're pretty. Sometimes she even entertains the thought that the stars themselves change too. 

It's nice to think she had something in common with them. She's been staring up at the same sky for the past five hundred years or so anyway. 

This lifetime hasn't been so bad. Minatozaki Sana. Born on the 29th of December 1996, in Osaka, Japan. It's information that's been drilled into her brain via well trained repetition, and after 22 years she can comfortably say she's settled and adjusted to living another life with a new name and new body. 

She can't quite remember the past ones though, to be honest. They're mostly snapshot fragments embedded in her subconscious; dormant memories that she'd stumble upon from time to time and remember that, oh yeah, her dad in her fourth life  _ was _ a massive bastard. It's just enough to remind her of all the lives she's lived before, but not enough to distract her from the present. 

She doesn't know her past names. Sometimes, she thinks she almost has them. Can feel the weight of a syllable half formed on her tongue, but then she falters and it's swallowed back down into her chest. Consider it some sort of handicap to the eternal universal endgame goal of discovering your soulmate - that Sana had to stumble around with one hand effectively tied behind her back. 

Five centuries. Fourteen lives. Zero soulmates. And not even a little cheat sheet from the universe with some half-assed notes scribbled on to give her a tiny clue from life #7, or something. Sana lets out a sigh, shifting restlessly atop the uncomfortable metal roof. She was getting pretty tired of playing this game. 

She couldn't really complain, though. Not this time, and certainly not this life (in comparison to some of the others - #4 was  _ really  _ a massive bitch). She had parents who adored her ( _ BIG  _ bonus, thanks for nothing #6), a comfortable, stable childhood in the heart of a thriving inner-city neighbourhood, access to private education in some of the most prestigious schools in the country, and… and... 

No soulmate. 

Not a hint. Zip, nada, absolutely zero reason for Sana to believe that they even existed in this world. 

Because that's the thing, right, is that most of the time - your soulmate isn't always around at the same time as you. Kind of stupid if you ask Sana, like, what is the  _ point _ of making this shit any harder than it already was? 

Sana didn't know. And she's had thirteen lifetimes to try and figure it out. There's a nagging suspicion in the back of her head that her soulmate was one of the many souls not actually carnated in the soul cycle yet. 

Which… sucked. Kind of. 

But hey, she's made it this many lives without one. And if she doesn't find them this life, then she'll just have to try again in the next one. 

The stars blink wordlessly. A dull dim and glow pulsating softly in the endless black expanse of night. There aren't as many as there used to be, well, that's a partial truth. She can't  _ see _ as many as she used to - shout out to the industrial revolution and humanity's ability to destroy the ecosystem within a fraction of the Earth's timeline. 

But she can see most of them out here. Not like her home in Osaka; sky bleeding a hazy orange as far as her eyes could see, streaked across the sky and blanketing the stars behind the result of a thriving metropolis. No, here, it was quiet. Almost unchanging. Sky still inky black and consuming, the beginnings of pollution from the tiny, unassuming little town only just starting to marr above where it stands. 

It was uneventful. The biggest thing to happen to the town was when Sana's parents moved here in her last year of high school, bringing her with them and inciting the overzealous response of a small town community welcoming the first fresh breath of change in the last decade. 

It feels like all of them have lived here for centuries, and honestly? She thinks some of them have - randomized reincarnation cycle be damned. 

And she's sort of stuck here. For now, at least. University breezed by faster than she realised - too caught up in actually having friends and not having to fear for her life like in other lifetimes. She'd forgotten herself for a bit (it was an appealing concept: four years where you're not only expected, but  _ encouraged _ to fuck around and get your youth out of your system before you sign yourself away to a mediocre life in a salaried job? Sounds good to her!) and between the parties and the late night adventures to god knows where and the countless all-nighters in someone else's dorm or the library, she graduated somewhere near the top of her class and has a shiny ass degree attached to her name and face. 

The job market was… a little less breezy. Hence why she ended up slinking back to her parents with her tail between her legs, and back to the town that looked more like it crushed your dreams rather than cultivate them. 

She'd left for four years and, yeah - it's all still the same. 

Nothing new. 

//

Sana's name isn't the only thing on the tips of everybody's tongue. 

Revered city girl. Big shot university graduate from Seoul National, coming back home with the kind of education that most kids here could only dream about. It was all people spoke about for a little while - as though it was the most exciting thing to happen to the town in years. 

(The sad truth of it all is, honestly, it probably was.)

She was the talk of the town for a scarce few weeks. The old ladies who seemed permanently glued to the benches outside the park gathered ominously in small clusters, talking loudly and unflinchingly about the lackluster social lives of everybody in this damn town. The Choi's dog had puppies, apparently, and the family farm two minutes away from Sana's house were having problems with their only tractor. Which of course, would be absolutely  _ dreadful _ for the annual apple picking festival. And by festival, Sana means that time of year when all of the 300 or so people who live in the surrounding area pick apples as an excuse to have  _ something  _ to look forward to every year. She's not even sure what the tractor's actually used for, all she's ever seen are small children clambering atop the big wheels and pretending that they were driving with their tiny legs dangling over the edge of the seat. 

The old women notice Sana and they all immediately beam, calling her over to start cooing at her and talking about how proud they were of her. She doesn't think she's ever spoken to these women before in her life, but it's nice and she grins enthusiastically throughout the whole exchange, promising to eat well and take care of herself like old Mrs Kim so fiercely demanded. 

They're there the next day too. And the next. But it's only when Sana picks the words 'new girl' out from their conversation does she really listen, because she hasn't been called that in a little over a year. And it takes a moment for it to sink in, but they really weren't talking about her. 

Curiosity peaks in her stomach at the tidbit of information. She feels like she's been too strongly influenced by the people in this small town, but she listens a little longer. Learns that the new girl moved to town a few weeks before Sana came home, and that she's young and pretty and doesn't interact much with her neighbours, but is exceedingly polite when she does. 

They said the same things about Sana when she first came here. So really, it was only natural for her to listen with slightly more interest than she usually would. They never say her name though, and Sana doesn't deign to ask at any point in the drawn out conversation. It's not as though she won't find out soon, though. She learned the hard way that the inhabitants of this little town were… relentlessly persistent in their habit of knowing everything about everyone. She finally manages to make her way to the small convenience store after ten minutes of excusing herself, pushing the conversation to the back of her mind and inspecting which apples looked the sweetest. 

It wouldn't take long. 

//

Four days. 

It took four days for her to meet the other girl on the tip of everybody's tongue. 

The experience had been something of a refreshing novelty. Still didn't know her name, just heard the same echoed sentiments that the girl was sweet, and polite, and pretty enough that the baker's son flushed a deep red all the way down to his chest when his mother brought her up in conversation while Sana was picking up her father's bread. 

So… she  _ supposes  _ that she might have made more walks into town than she usually did. For no reason, really. Exercise was always good, and it was getting warm enough to walk around in a t-shirt - and maybe even shorts if she wanted to feel particularly daring. Because the weather was nice and walking was better than sitting at home all day. No other reason than that. 

Though if that were wholly true, it didn't explain the surge of… excitement? Relief? Overwhelming anticipation crashing into her stomach at the sight of an unfamiliar face scrambling along the roadside trying to corral the loose peaches scattered around her feet. 

Oh, she  _ was _ pretty, even under mild duress and mouth contorted downwards in a firm grimace. Sana can only get glimpses of her face beneath the oversized woven hat dwarfing the majority of her face, but she gets flashes of plump, pouty lips and a strong nose with a ridge in the middle, as though it had been broken at some point and not completely allowed to heal. Dark hair falls just to the top of her shoulders. Long enough to touch the top of the shoulder blades peeking above the hem of the cream coloured tank top, and long enough to form an inconvenient curtain around her face when she bends down to start picking up the fallen fruit. 

Sana makes her way over, unsurprised that her approach wasn't noticed. 

"Five peaches." 

The girl looks up with a start, and Sana gets her first good look at her face in its entirety. Her mouth dries up unexpectedly; the words she could have said falling out of her open mouth and bouncing off of the cracked asphalt uselessly, because she's seen pretty girls before. She's seen  _ plenty _ of pretty girls, and she's kissed more than her fair share of pretty girls, but none of them have ever left her tongue-tied with nothing more than an innocent, wide-eyed stare. 

"Excuse me?" 

Her voice is soft. Timid, barely audible. Sana coughs. 

"Five peaches." She gestures with a hand towards the ripped paper bag trying it's best to hold on to the two peaches hanging on for dear life. "The bags from the fruit stand can hold five peaches before they tear." Sana counts at least eight on the ground. 

"Ah...thank you." The girl seems shy still. Vaguely confused, understandably, and the remnants of flustered embarrassment of being caught in a predicament by a stranger still visible on her cheeks. Sana had the sneaking suspicion that this would be the end of her opportunistic introduction, but she's surprised when the girl wets her lips to speak again. 

"That's an oddly specific thing to know."

"My mother likes peaches." She explains, liking the imperceptible way the face opposite her softens at the information. Cute. "You can fit six apples though - but  _ only _ if they're the small ones."

Her face twists into an amused smile. "Sounds like a heartbreaking sacrifice. What about strawberries?" 

"As many as the bag can hold."

The girls eyes gleam, smile shifting back to that ever present shyness. But still a smile. "I like strawberries."

Sana plucks two peaches up with her left hand, scooping another three into the nook of her arm. "Then you're in luck. The Oh's have the sweetest strawberries on the peninsula."

They do, Sana's not lying, but the sweet taste of ripe strawberries right off of the stem seems drastically dull compared to the slapstick streaks of honey pooling behind two rows of popstar perfect teeth. "I'll remember that for next time." There's some awkward jostling, paper rustling as the non-bruised peaches get shuffled into her left hand and the right one hovers between them - extended in greeting. "I'm Momo."

Something shifts slightly, then. Something slight enough for Sana to dismiss it as a quiet gurgle in her stomach, or a brief twinge pulling in her chest that disappears faster than she could register the discomfort. Nothing major enough to wipe the grin off of her face by any means, and the second twinge comes at the soft giggle that slips out of Momo when Sana somewhat successfully juggles ( _ and  _ balances) an impressive five peaches against her stomach. 

"I'm Sana." She says simply, taking the offered hand in her own and giving a good, firm shake. 

It's only after Momo leaves that Sana realises the building tide of excitement she thought would break has not. Gentle ripples lapping at the edges, droplets spilling over but still there as a whole. And it's only when she gets home does she realise. 

The feeling was still there. Quieter, sure, but insistently present even curled up on the veranda in her mother's swing-set, foot dangling low enough for her toes to brush the varnished wood periodically. It has her fingers thrumming with excitement, tapping an inconsistent rhythm against the spine of her book as though she couldn't wait to turn the page. 

It wasn't much. But it was new. 

//

Sana can't really explain to her parents just  _ why _ she's taken such an invigorated interest in mid-afternoon walks. 

They don’t question it anyhow. They’re just glad Sana’s found an interest outside of laying on her bed all day and counting the tiles in the kitchen.

(It’s 84, by the way, on the floor. There’s another 45 along the back wall - as long as the tiles are even behind the kitchen counters and the previous house’s owner didn’t skimp on costs. Not that it matters.)

Either way they’re thrilled, and her mother gets an abundance of peaches from the fruit stand every time and her father has to tell her that yes, even if the walnut wholewheat bread is his favourite that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants a fresh loaf every day, Sana - but he appreciates the sentiment even if his waistline does not. Sana’s eyes linger on the overflowing fruit bowl next to the microwave and the carefully separated over-ripe peaches situated on the counter next to the bin and - okay, yeah, you know what? Maybe she is going a little overboard with all the trips into the market. 

But it’s not as though there’s an awful lot else for her to do otherwise. It’d feel silly to walk the two miles from their home to the market only to come back empty handed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I saw the rise and fall of whole dynasties. Watched villages burn and my people die at the hands of foreign invaders. Sometimes by the hands of the people who were supposed to protect us the most. In my fourth life I was a noble girl. In my last, I was a young village girl who lived on the outskirts of one of the biggest cities in Japan, and I watched as the biggest bomb in the world detonated just before I died.”
> 
> //momo new, moved to town. 
> 
> //become friends. Coincidence, or a weird gravity, but sana finds herself in the same place as momo one too many times to not give in to the curiosity to find out more about her. Maybe this small town is getting to her.
> 
> //momo kind of an enigma. an author? anyway, this is her first life. she thinks anyway, can't remember if it wasn't. becomes fascinated with Sana's stories. 
> 
> //how do you know? when you've met your soulmate? lazy smile. ask me again in the next lifetime. 
> 
> //you know, the bakery's profits have almost doubled in the last few months.momo, licking icing sugar off her lips. can't think why. 
> 
> //they're not soulmates. Momo's died when she was 11 and sana still hasn't felt hers. momo listens to Sana's stories of her past life, and sana clings on to the few memories momo has of feeling her soulmate, and yeah. 
> 
> //they forge something for themselves.


	7. [SAMO] $3.67 - the sequel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oh god im so fucking sorry for this one, i know people wanted a sequel and i had every intention to follow through with that but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ life got in the way

Sana could count the number of absolutely terrible days she’d had on one hand. 

She was fortunate in a way. Had never really struggled much throughout life - growing up had been a breeze, despite it being a little lonely at times being an only child and with both parents working full time, but she’d been blessed with a good life. A life full of love, and filled with good people with heartfelt desire for her to succeed and achieve her dreams.

But, like every other soul on Earth, she had her bad days too.

Today was shaping up to be one of those days. 

Her initial plan had been to have a rest day. Spend the entire day back home and crawl under her duvet to knock out for a few hours after pulling an all nighter in the library for the upcoming assignment that's due next Monday, because - between being an intern at the local courthouse for two days a week, doing three at university and working part time in a small coffee shop on Saturdays; she didn't really have a lot of spare time going. So when her professor dropped the surprise essay with only a week to complete it, she’d put on her big girl boots and resigned herself to the fact that she'd have to pull an all nighter to get it done in time. 

Now, that wasn't the problem. She’d already prepared herself for that, and now it was over and done with and all she could think of was the thick, freshly washed sheets waiting for her back at home that she couldn't wait to dive into. It was the high pitched ding indicating that she'd gotten an important email when she was about halfway home that set the wheel of doom in motion.

An email.

From her professor. 

Informing her and the other twenty five people in her group that, in fact, the surprise essay due next Monday had been cancelled. 

And instead the assignment had been altered to include working with a partner instead on a much different case than the one they'd initially had to look into. 

So, instead of resting at home before her evening class she'd had to frantically message her assigned partner convincing them to meet up with her today to do the work. She could  _ feel _ the reluctance through the screen; just how  _ unwilling _ they were to actually put some effort into this project and do some research, which, of course, Sana had spent the five hours she'd had free doing already - but Sana had never gotten anything less than an A this semester, and she wasn't about to let some lazy brat ruin that good streak. 

Even if it meant getting a bus all the way to the other side of town after her last class ended because her partner insisted on them working on the project at their place. Sure, she was running on four energy drinks and about seven hours of sleep during the last forty-eight hours, and her partner actually didn't have anything planned for the whole day, but  _ sure _ , she'd be the one to put the effort into this. At least she didn't have to bother about dressing up, leaving in her comfiest and baggiest clothes in her wardrobe, she'd at least give herself this little bit of indulgence in this otherwise taxing day. 

But whoever was in charge of her string of fate or her fortune or whatever the fuck dictated the flow of her daily life really had it out for her today. Everything had started out fine - the guy she'd been partnered with was actually really nice and seemed like he cared about the assignment in question, which was a first for the girl because her past partners have all been lazy and uncaring. Conversation had been easy and focused. They talked about the project - he'd even contributed towards the research and ideas she'd drafted up before her classes and Sana almost thought it was too good to be true.

She proved herself right at around the two hour mark, when conversation starting taking a turn from 'how do we do this?’ and 'should we include that?’ into 'so what do you do in your free time?’, and the dreaded 'so are you seeing anyone?’. 

She was pretty well versed in dodging these kind of questions. Years of countless boys trying to sweet talk her in high school had prepared her for the nameless strangers who tried to get her number at the coffee shop, and the suggestive remarks some of the seniors at the courthouse would pass off as complementary and harmless.

(She hated it, all of it.) 

But he had been insistent in keeping conversation anywhere but focused on the work at hand. So Sana had made a big show out of checking the time on her phone, gasping and saying how she had to get home because her roommate needed her urgently and had left as quickly as her feet could carry her without being suss. 

And now here she was. All the way on the other side of town traipsing down the sidewalk slowly and lethargically at almost midnight down a street she didn't recognise but was fairly lit up. Her feet were dragging more and more with every step, her body close to crashing right there and then before she even made it back home. Jihyo would scold her in that tone of voice that made Sana feel like she's done everything bad ever to exist when she finds out just how much she's neglected looking after herself today. 

“ _ You haven't even eaten today?” _ She'd say disappointedly, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose and eyes scrunched tightly shut. “ _ Sana we've talked about this.”  _

__ Just the thought of it is enough to make her shudder. This street is mostly residential, apartment blocks stretching along the entire length but she can see a small, dimly lit shop sign hanging out just on the corner. Tries to squint but even with her glasses on she can't quite read the name, but it doesn't really matter what the name is because there's bound to be food inside. 

She had to break into a $10 to get the bus down here, and her little coffee shop job didn't really give her the luxury of a lot of spare money lying around, unfortunately. She kept walking forward, reaching into her pocket that jingled with loose change and counted it slowly. Had exactly $5.89 spare, but that would be enough for a drink and a snack. Maybe even two snacks. 

The thought gets her excited enough to walk a little faster, pushing through the heavy door and not even flinching at the sharp trill of the bell above it. Didn't even look at who was in the shop with her or who was at the counter, didn't really care. All she was focused on was getting something to give her just enough energy to make it back home, making a beeline for the luminescent light of the drinks fridge against the wall. 

The reflection looking back at her in the glass door is almost enough to make her laugh. The last time she'd rocked this kind of look had been midterms in her first year, holed up in her room and cramming for days on end, only leaving for bathroom breaks and to replenish snack supplies. It had worked, in her defence, but the year after that Jihyo drew up a much healthier and less stressful timetable for the both of them to get through exams, one that meant Sana didn't end up looking like an extra from Train to Busan for a week. 

God she can’t wait to just get home and for this day to end.

Her eyes linger on the numerous brands of energy drink lining up one of the rows in the refrigerator but the thought of a fifth one is making her kind of nauseous. Her stomach has a brief flashback to first year midterms again and yeah, no, definitely not an energy drink. The harsh fluorescent lights were making her headache worse the longer she stared, scrunching her eyes shut tightly to try and alleviate the pain and just sticking her hand blindly out towards a random drink, hoping for the best. 

Tired eyes reluctantly blink open to find a chilled carton of orange juice. It’ll do, she’s too exhausted to put more thought or effort into a different type of drink and it’s better than soda or another energy drink. 

She shuffles further down the aisle towards the counter, seeing the store attendant for the first time since she entered. She must be more tired than she thought because even with her glasses on she can barely make out more than a blurry body, but at the very least she can tell it's a girl. Probably. Grabbing candy takes less than a second - she knows  _ exactly _ what she's getting and the milky way bar reigns supreme over the other chocolate bars anyway. Although, there's a small little packet of brownies that are catching her eye the longer she lingers, calling out to her because she deserves it, she  _ deserves _ to treat herself to another pick me up.

She’ll share them with Jihyo, and it's that thought that lessens the guilt and makes the decision for her. 

The store worker is looking down when she makes her way over the counter. Sana can see the light of a phone screen tucked away by her side, and honestly she can't blame the girl one bit because graveyard shifts are a bitch to get through. But also she really just wants to get home, and it seems like the brown haired cashier hasn't even noticed her. 

She coughs pointedly. “Hi.”

Her head snaps up instantly, eyes wide and looking like the kid who just got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Or the convenience store worker playing on their phone behind the counter, either analogy works fine. 

Sana couldn't see it before, her face hidden by a veil of hair every time she looked over at her, but the girl behind the counter is  _ very _ pretty. And still staring at her with eyes wide with surprise, mouth open just a little as though she wasn't sure how to react or what to say. 

It's in that moment that Sana remembers she's dressed like she just rolled out of a garbage can. She hasn't showered in two days and she's wearing exhaustion like the finest design of this autumn's best fall wear, feeling like she's been dragged through a gutter and absolutely in  _ no _ shape to be interacting with a girl as pretty as this.

Fate  _ really _ had it in for her today. 

The silence that stretches between them is almost palpable, the cashier girl just staring at Sana with cheeks that are turning even pinker the longer she looks at her dishevelled state. Her mouth’s still slightly agape (God, did Sana really look  _ that _ bad?) and she entertains the thought of reaching out to push it gently shut. It's enough to bring a smile onto her tired face, and just like that the spells broken, the pretty cashier blinking once or twice and clearing her throat with a small cough. 

“Hi.”  _ Oh God, her voice is so cute _ . “Just these items?”

She doesn't trust herself to respond normally so she hums, nudging her items across the counter into outstretched hands. The other girl must have been more caught off guard than Sana thought because she's fumbling as she scans the items, wrist rotating hurriedly to try and get her orange juice to scan and she  _ could _ tell the girl that her hand is covering the bar code, or she could study her face as her tongue sticks ever so slightly out in determined effort. The scanner beeps loudly and the tongue disappears behind a smug grin that she almost wouldn't have noticed if she wasn't watching for it. 

“Do you need a bag?”

She doesn't. Not really. The straps of her backpack are digging into her shoulders and the front pocket of her hoodie could probably fit a small child inside, so she didn't  _ really _ need a bag. Not at all. 

She smiles. “Yes please.”

If she'd have had half a mind she might have paid attention to the fact that the girl was wearing a name tag and she could have given her a name there and then. Instead, she focuses on the movements of her hands as she places everything into a bag, and that stupid, adorable tongue that can't seem to keep itself inside her mouth and that goddamn lollipop threatening to fall out everytime she moved. 

She was  _ far _ too tired to deal with this. 

Change jingling in her hand drags her back to the present and she looks up at the exact moment the girl decides to look too, and the brief second of stunned, unexpected eye contact sends a sluggish jolt of something she's felt before through her chest. Something old, and exciting, and something she definitely doesn't really have the time to put into, but she's more than content with settling on watching pretty girls with flushed cheeks try and check her out. 

Whatever it is, the pretty cashier breaks it first, eyes shooting to her left to inspect the peeling paint on the wall and hands coming up to grab the lollipop in her mouth. It's getting harder to hide her smile as anything other than customary politeness, and the other girls hand is already open when she puts the exact change into it. 

It goes into the drawer straight away. Sana doesn't know if the girl can  _ really _ count that fast or if she didn't even bother to count it at all, but then the till’s slammed shut and plastic handles are being looped around her wrist and she doesn't have any other reason to linger in this store for longer than this, really. 

It… kind of felt like there was something else to say. Or something else the other girl  _ wanted _ to say, but Sana is about 0.2 seconds away from taking a nap on the counter there and then, and she knows she's cute, but not enough to get away with knocking out right there and then in front of a pretty stranger. 

She dredges up another surge of energy from God knows where, dragging herself to the door and fiddling with the carton of juice. 

“Have a good night!”

_ Oh _ . 

Oh yeah.

“You too.” 

And she means it. She really does. Even throws up a half-hearted wave as the door closes behind her with a sharp jingle, taking a few deep lungfuls of air when the outside wind hits her like a gentle wake up. The walk home doesn't feel so bad now, not when she thinks about it. Most of it goes by in a haze as soon as she turns onto a street she actually recognizes, feet moving on automatic and doing all the thinking for her.

She's through the door and up the stairs before she knows it, tip toeing in like the world's worst cat burglar (at least she's  _ trying _ not to wake Jihyo, at least she can say she's moderately considerate). She throws her clothes anywhere, everywhere, falling into the clutches of sleep that had been pulling at her for the last few hours as soon as her back hit the mattress.

She's out like a light, and she falls asleep with citrus on her tongue.

\---

Something isn't right.

Her sheets feel like heaven when she starts to wake up, warm and soft and it's not surprising to realise that she's completely and totally wrapped up in a cosy little blanket burrito. The devil on her shoulder whispers to stay inside a while longer, and, as tempting as that sounds, she has a morning class that she has to attend to.  _ How _ that takes priority over her warmth and well being, she has  _ no _ idea, but this was the world she lived in - like it or not. 

It's only when she reluctantly crawls out from the sheets and her face meets warm air that she realises something's wrong. 

It is  _ way _ too warm for this time of morning, even if it has been one of the hottest Septembers on record. And the rays of sunlight spilling through the gap in her curtains are much too high in the sky to be early morning, making her blink back the sudden spots behind her eyes and squint to make out the time on the clock on the wall.

It's 12:05.

The scream that follows is otherworldly, a loud shriek of horror because  _ holy fuck she's an hour late for her lecture and her professor already hates her and she can't afford to fall behind and oh GOD. _

The half wrapped burrito thuds to the floor with her inside it, limbs frantic as she scrambles out and lunges for the door to start getting ready.  _ God,  _ she has to brush her hair and throw on some clothes, and she doesn't even  _ know _ if she has any clean laundry or if she's gonna have to throw on her clothes from yesterday (and  _ that'd  _ be throwing away the last few shreds of dignity she was holding onto if she burst into the lecture hall dressed in that). And oh  _ fuck, _ she hasn't showered in three fucking days because she hasn't been able to take a break that whole Goddamn time, and her mouth tastes like absolute ass because she didn't think to brush her teeth before she blacked out on her bed.

The day’s only just begun and she hates it.

She gets through the doorway and sees Jihyo sitting calmly on the couch, stirring her drink absently and looking at something on Sana's laptop on the coffee table. 

The younger girl glances up nonchalantly, barely phased at the obvious panic on her roomies face as she smiles. “Afternoon, sunshine.”

“Hi Jihyo, love you lots but I have a lecture that I'm horrendously late for and have to attend within the next uhhh, twenty minutes or so unless I want to get my ass beat-”

“No you don't.”

Sana skids to a halt. “What?”

Jihyo smiles gently, fingers moving deftly across the keys and taking a small sip of her drink as she types. “Messaged your lecturer. Said you were ill. Got Sooyoung to send you a copy of her notes for today's lecture so you can catch up from home.” 


	8. [MIHYO] Hey baby,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oh man. this is. by far the biggest unfinished wip i have. like 13k words? anyway yeah sorry laurenz im never gonna finish this but ily anyway  
> uh yeah anyway, mihyo. used to be in love and split up and now they're meeting up again. lots of fun and feelings that never really went away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> actually hold on before we get into this, i was actually rly proud of this one. put a lot of time and effort into making sure it flowed exactly how i wanted it to, alright that's all i wanted to say xox enjoy xox

“I’m so glad we could do this tonight.”

Jihyo’s voice is laced heavily with relief, an unreserved smile stretching into her cheeks as she looks at Mina from across the tiny, high topped table she'd managed to snag them just a few steps away from the bar. 

It takes a beat too long to remind herself that she needs to reply, thoughts drowned out from the characteristic noises of a busy bar on a Friday night. It's been a while since she's done this, scooching forward in her chair and feeling their knees knock under the table. 

“Me too.” She sends a smile back - a genuine smile, not like the ones she sends to her coworkers or her neighbours. The action feels a little foreign, a little out of place (it  _ really _ has been a while) but Jihyo smiles impossibly wider and everything falls into place much more comfortably. 

She doesn't deign to mention that she had to reschedule a moderately important meeting with her boss to make it tonight. It doesn't feel like something necessary to bring up. It'd only make the other girl feel guilty, and the last thing Mina wants it to wipe that pretty smile off her face - not when she hasn't seen it in so long and  _ god, _ Jihyo looks… 

Amazing. She looks amazing. 

She takes a sip of her drink to quell her nerves, fingers wrapped loosely around the cool neck of whatever beer Jihyo ordered for her from the bar. It doesn't taste all that great, but beer is beer. She wonders why Jihyo even ordered them any at all. Last time she checked, Jihyo had been partial to spirits, and alcohol that  _ didn _ 't taste like someone pissed in a bottle. 

But that felt like a lifetime ago, and the way Jihyo nurses the identical bottle in her own hand is familiar and well practiced. 

Much like the way Jihyo leans over the table as she speaks, fingers much too close to Mina's as they drum against the cool tabletop to the beat of the song playing from the jukebox in the corner. 

“How have you been?”

That was… a loaded question. The type of question where you have two options, really. You either shrug indifferently, shoot a smile that's supposed to be reassuring and say something along the lines of ‘ _ I've been well _ ’, or ‘ _ It's been good _ ’. It's the option she's most acquainted with, and it's tempting to travel down the well worn path instead of her second choice - spilling her guts there and then, because no; she  _ hasn't  _ been all that well, really. And it's tempting, it really is. Especially because it's Jihyo, and she's always been more understanding that Mina could ever comprehend, born with this innate ability to make whoever she's with feel more comfortable and unguarded than they'd ever planned to be. 

It's the eyes, she muses, reading the open invitation sitting in plain sight on the other girls face. She's comfortable, and inviting, and it makes Mina want to confess every single problem that's plagued her in the two years since they'd last seen each other. 

She takes a lengthy swig of her beer. 

“I've been good.” The lie comes out easy, naturally, through unclenched teeth and she even tops it off with a genuine smile, because if anything she's just happy to have Jihyo here in front of her again. “How about you?”

Jihyo smiles. Knowingly, because she can tell - of  _ course _ she can tell. 

“I've been better.” She confesses easily, shoulders rolling with a small shrug as she takes a small sip of her own beer. The action takes a world of weight that Mina didn't even notice off of her features. “Much better for tonight.”

The song on the jukebox changes. Something fast paced, and energetic, and it makes Mina's heart feel like it’s going to rip through her blouse. “Because of me or the alcohol?”

She gets a knowing smile in return. “I guess we'll find out.”

That sort of sounds like a challenge, and Mina's never been one to back down from a competition. Returns her smile with what she hopes is a soft one of her own, shifting closer on the small, uncomfortable barstool. 

“I guess we will.”

Jihyo smiles at that. With her eyes this time, warm and crinkled and the barely-there creases at the corners are new to Mina. 

“So how  _ have _ you been?”

Oh, there was  _ no _ escaping this. 

Mina sighs, hand raking through her hair and pushing it to the side. She's about to speak when an overly rowdy group of people burst through the doors, disrupting the already loud (but stable) volume of the bar with booming voices and laughter that fills the entire space. Jihyo looks at her in a way that Mina can't quite decipher, and  _ that _ hits her harder than any alcohol. 

“Wanna hop to another bar?”

Her eyes go wide even as Jihyo still looks at her with that same smile. You know, the smile from when they were twenty-one and young and dumb enough to spend their nights going from bar to bar until one of them called it quits or until the boulevard shut down. 

And it's just as effective now as it was three years ago. 

“Old habits die hard?” Jihyo rolls her eyes, smiling into her drink as she tosses back her head and drains half the bottle. 

“Finish your drink and let's go.”

She hesitates and Jihyo notices. Smiles a different smile, and this one Mina knows  _ far _ too well. “You've never been one to waste free alcohol.”

“Only if it tastes like the remnants of a frat boys beer keg.”

There's another smile then. Coy, a little dangerous - tugging the corners of Jihyo's lips into cheeks that aren't quite as filled as she remembers. The bar isn't particularly well lit, but Mina swears she sees something glint in Jihyo's eyes as she leans further over the tabletop. 

“Finish that and I'll buy you something else at the next bar.”

Mina perks up at that. “Promise?”

Half-lidded eyes gleam across the tabletop. Hook, line, sinker. 

“I promise.” Jihyo replies, and the words are barely out of her mouth before Mina tips the contents of the bottle down her throat in one swift motion. The other girl’s already out of her seat when she places the empty bottle down on the table, wrapping the tie of her coat around her waist and barely sparing Mina a glance as she begins to make her way towards the door.

She shakes her head, but her feet are already moving on their own accord. 

Because following Jihyo has always been the easiest decision she’s had to make.

  
  


///

  
  


“You know you could have just saved yourself some hassle and have gotten me that to begin with, right?” 

Jihyo sits down with a barely stifled eye roll, sliding into the seat opposite her in the booth they’d managed to grab with two drinks in hand. “Forgive me for wanting to pace the both of us tonight.” Her voice is dripping with sarcasm, sliding the tall, thin glass across the table that Mina takes it with a gratuitous nod. “I actually wanted to talk to you for a little while before things got too hazy, so I thought maybe beer was the safest route to go.”

“Is that code for ‘you still think I have next to no tolerance?”

Jihyo grins mischievously. “Maybe, but I was trying to save you some face.”

This is easy. Much too easy to fall back into old habits and learned mannerisms, almost effortless to fall back into everything Jihyo encompassed. 

“Hey, I’ll have you know I can hold my own now.” She defends herself indignantly, because if the last two years have taught her anything, it's that she can drink a lot more than she could before. 

Jihyo hums, low and teasing in the back of her throat. “So what's that - two drinks now instead of one?” 

The low lighting does nothing but accentuate Jihyo's features as she tilts her head and laughs, drawing attention to every part of her that Mina used to know so well. Their time apart had been kind to Jihyo, settling into her face like a warm kiss on a cold winter's day. A faint touch - the lines of her cheeks a little sharper; the indents in her cheek a little deeper when her eyes disappear and crinkles form at the edges. It's hard for not to trace the strong ridge of her nose and the pretty, plump shape of her lips, because she’s here - Jihyo’s right  _ here _ , in front of her, for the first time in  _ two years _ and it’s not like this was something she thought about everyday...

But most of them. She thought about this for most of them.

She hums back, conceding defeat and ignoring the wicked curl Jihyo’s lips adopt at the assent. It’s a good time to take a sip from her glass and pretend like she’s not drinking in everything around them, the sharp, clean taste of gin and tangy lime hitting the back of her tongue as she glances at her surroundings. 

She’d never been to this place before. It was certainly not somewhere she’d heard of, not that she has the time to discover new bars and clubs anymore, but Jihyo had apparently - her hand sliding into hers almost as soon as the topic had approached, a pretty promise sitting in her eyes and even prettier words spilling from cherry red lips as she gushed about this relaxing little joint on 3rd street. How it had a colour theme that would impress  _ even _ her, and that she thinks Mina would really like the atmosphere of the whole place. 

‘ _ It’d suit you. _ ’ They’re charming words that she should have known how to counter by now, but all she can think about is how much Jihyo suits cherry red, and the way her fingers seem to fit imperceptibly against her own to form a halfway coherent response.

She was right though. Mina had felt at ease from the moment the small bar came into sight; a little dark, but not cold. Subdued, but it had warmth - the kind of place that offers a cover to people who want to get away for a little while, for people looking for some solitude or the comfort of finding another like-minded soul to confide in for just a night. It even felt like the kind of place where you could rekindle a fire burned out; stoke the embers until the charcoal gleamed red and gave her back just enough heat to start something anew. 

The gin is cool going down her throat, but it does little to diminish the heat of her face. It  _ was _ a warm night, she reasons. 

One drink turns into two. And then three, and she's on her second rum and coke and her fourth drink of the night when Jihyo throws her head back in unabashed laughter as she recounts the embarrassing situations she's gotten herself into at work. 

Old habits are achingly easy to slip back into, but nothing that felt this good could possibly be bad for her in any shape or form. Every smile or laugh that Jihyo gives her just makes whatever half-baked engine that's keeping her brain going run a bit more smoothly, and Mina wants more. 

“What so he just,” Jihyo barely gets the words out, laughter choking up her throat, “He just looks at you? And leaves?”

Mina sighs, shame creeping up her neck. “Yes.”

The laughter that follows is uncontrollable, and far, far too contagious, and Mina finds herself laughing along with her. 

(Not that she hasn't already been doing that the whole time anyway.)

“Yeah, it wasn't my proudest moment.” 

There's a bemused twinkle in her eyes before she replies. “Oh, so you've had a lot of those then?”

A sheepish smile. “Can't say I have, no.” It only took her half a heartbeat to realise the woman opposite her was being playful, and it takes even less time for the usual embarrassment that accompanied telling this story (Momo had laughed for about ten minutes straight when she heard) to turn into something she suddenly didn't feel so bad about experiencing. 

Jihyo's always had a sort of gentleness to her. A born kindness that was equal parts disarming and captivating - just one more layer to the complex equation that made people feel entirely at ease spilling their life secrets with barely a nudge. It was this kindness that pulled Mina to her in the first place, all those years ago. 

She looks at her then, with those kind eyes and Mina knew conversation would eventually steer in this direction tonight. “Is it good then? Working at the place of your dreams?”

That's not what Mina hears. She hears ‘ _ Was it worth it? Leaving me?’.  _

__ She shakes her head to clear her thoughts. “It’s… okay.”

“Mina.”

Her voice comes out soft, but she hears the firm edge in her words. And blame it on the alcohol, definitely not the company, but Mina's lips are feeling loose and she has two years of words unsaid begging to escape. “I just, I don't know Jihyo.” She exhales loudly, hands combing through her hair roughly. “It was my dream job. You know that.”

Jihyo hums. “I do.”

She doesn’t recall her fingers shaking this much a moment ago. Wants Jihyo to reach across and take them into her hand like she's done a hundred times before, hold them tight enough that the shaking stops for just a moment, or let Mina’s restless fingers tap a rhythm against her palm. Blame it on the alcohol, she supposes.

“And I'm good at it. I'm really good at it, actually. And it's everything I know.”

“That's not true.” Jihyo takes a small sip of her drink, Mina's eyes flitting to the four empty glasses filling up her side of the table. “You know a lot more than just coding.”

“But I have a  _ degree _ in coding, Jihyo. A nice, shiny one, that should be displayed on my bedroom wall or something but it's just tucked in the bottom drawer of my desk, and you're right - I  _ do _ know more. But I don't have a degree in being able to play only three Ed Sheeran songs on the guitar, or, or, knowing which King sparked a revolution in 1381,” She lets out an exasperated groan and Jihyo's hand reaches out to pull one of hers into her own. “I mean yeah sure - I  _ have _ collected every single coin in Super Mario Bros, but you can't get a degree for that.”

Jihyo's thumb rubs circles into her skin. “Hey, for all the effort we put into collecting those coins we deserve a damn degree.” Mina smiles at the contact and the memories. “Even if you did throw me off the edge of the map one too many times to be considered an ‘accident’.” The last part gets muttered under her breath, but in a way that made it deliberate for her to hear, and it coaxes fond laughter out of them both. 

“You're not happy there.” 

She hates that Jihyo is able to pull this out of her in one stupid night. 

“I'm not.” It's her first time admitting it out loud. Not even to Sana, or Momo; who, to their credit, have asked her this question more times than she can count. 

There's just… something about Jihyo. 

Jihyo who's looking at her with those pretty, kind eyes that she doesn't deserve. Slightly glazed from all the alcohol, but still beautiful. 

She can remember all the times they've been like this before. Half a bottle of liquor down through a night, huddled closely over a tabletop at a bar under the guise of needing to hear the other speak but really, just using any excuse to be near each other. And it almost felt the same; with Jihyo's leg pressing against the side of hers, and their fingers intertwined against the cool surface of the table (when  _ had _ their hands gotten there?), looking at each other like nothing else existed in the moment. 

But almost wasn't quite enough to convince her. They had been younger - a little naive, way too far over their heads to really understand the depth of everything they were feeling and the decisions they were making. 

And they had been in love. 

That was the important part. 

“Have you considered leaving?”

She laughs, and she doesn't mean for it to come out as bitter but it does. “Only a few dozen times this week.” Jihyo gives her hand a small squeeze. “But I don't exactly have the time to find a new dream.”

“I don't think you have to,” She looks up from the table, and Jihyo's so close she could kiss her if she just leaned forward a few inches. She doesn't, because that would be stupid. But she could. “You don't have to find a new dream, but you definitely need to do something a little reckless.”

Her eyes narrow in confusement. “Something reckless?” Jihyo beams. 

“When was the last time you did something because you wanted to? Something  _ really _ stupid, something that you might regret tomorrow?”

She doesn't have an answer because she can't remember. There are vague recollections of a shopping cart race in an empty parking lot at 3am with Nayeon and Jeongyeon that had resulted in a few stitches, but that had been years ago. Jihyo wasn't there when it happened, but she  _ was _ the first face that appeared at the hospital, freshly thrown out of bed at 5am to deal with the fact that her best friends had gotten her girlfriend a little bit banged up. 

Hell, Mina didn't even really regret that all that much. The kisses at the time made the pain feel  _ so _ much better. 

She seems to have taken too long, because there's that familiar gleam back in Jihyo's eyes. The one that promises trouble; definitely a good time, at the very least, and Mina's missed it terribly. 

“Want to do something stupid with me?”

Her heartbeat gets a little faster.

She doesn't even have to say yes. 

  
  


///

  
  


It's somewhere en route between the third and fourth bar that Jihyo tells her what's really troubling her. 

The third bar had had really cheap shots. The kind of shots that Momo used to buy for all their friends at some low rate student bar, and none of them would exactly know what comprised the alcohol inside but what they  _ did _ know was it tasted good and it got them drunk  _ fast.  _ And really, when you're in college, nothing else actually matters. 

Hell, it didn't even have to taste good as long as it did the job. 

And they did. Boy, did they do the job. It only takes two for Mina to lose the last of the grip sobriety had on her decision making, all the tightly reigned control and finely crafted masks she had in place melting away with every drop of liquor sliding down her neck. And it was the best she'd felt in a long time. 

Her cheeks hurt from how often her face splits into a grin, conversation easy and light and it feels  _ really _ good to laugh at how half of the third shot doesn't even make its way into Jihyo's mouth but spills messily down her chin, and hearing Jihyo's goofy, exaggerated cheers that fill up the whole bar when both their glasses slam home on the bar top. 

It feels really good. 

It doesn't feel so good when the bartender politely asks them to leave for disrupting the other patrons, and, for the record, it feels absolutely  _ awful  _ being twenty-four and getting escorted out the bar as a bunch of barely legal college students watch your walk of shame. The second their feet hit the pavement the embarrassment changes into uncontained laughter that rolls out of both of them in waves, clutching and staggering at each other in the street and not caring about the eyes judging them as they walked by. If it had been anyone else Mina would be mortified. Hell, after this she probably wouldn't have left her apartment for a whole month. But Jihyo is smiling and giggling against her shoulder as she leads the both of them down a side street that Mina doesn't know, whispering their game plan for how to act sober enough to get into the place and dictating their exact steps as they walk. 

And honestly, Mina can barely even remember the shame of getting kicked out of a bar when Jihyo's whispering like this is the most important secret mission of their life. 

“Left, right, left - no no, your left damn it.”

Mina giggles and corrects herself, falling in line with Jihyo's orders and revelling in the satisfied smile that sits prettily on her face as they successfully make it around another corner. Jihyo's arm is heavy around her waist, hand curled on her hip and thumb absently tinkering at the waistband of her jeans and it's kind of all Mina can focus on right now. That, and the heat of the other woman pressed tightly into her side, with Mina's arm slung around her shoulder and her other hand intertwined with Mina's against her collarbone. 

It's distracting, enough so that she doesn't realise Jihyo is speaking until she feels an unexpected warmth against the skin of her neck, glancing down to see Jihyo looking up at her expectantly. She's grateful she wore heels, giving her just a few extra inches to bless her with a sight like this. 

“You didn't hear me did you?” There's no real scorn in her tone, just amusement, but Mina feels heat rise to her cheeks regardless. Shakes her head and her smile gets a little less sheepish at the smooth roll of Jihyo's eyes. 

“I said, do you know what really sucks?”

Mina hums quizzically. Words were far too much effort, and even if they were slightly slurred and a little messy, Jihyo's voice was still one of the nicest sounds she'd ever heard. 

“My parents still won't stop pestering me.”

Oh. 

Okay, now words weren't too much effort. 

“About…?” She trails off, stupidly, because they both know what this is about. 

Because this had been part of a conversation they had two years ago. The one in the apartment they used to share; the one that ended in tears and words neither of them could form properly, and words that had gotten stuck in their throats as they walked away from each other and called an end to the relationship that had defined them both for the better part of four years.

Because Mina had wanted to leave.

“Yeah.” Jihyo sighs, and Mina feels all the weight of this worry re-enter her body all at once. “About not being married yet.”

And Jihyo had wanted to stay.

“You're only twenty-four.”

“My parents were married and my mother pregnant with my younger sister by the time she was my age.”

Silence falls between them for a little while. This had always been a difficult discussion, because neither of them had an answer. Neither had a solution to how incessantly Jihyo's parents would insist for her to find a partner, to settle down and start a family ‘while she still can’. 

“They just don't understand that I… just don't have the time.” Jihyo's voice is quieter than Mina likes. She's speaking more into the fabric of her shirt than anything, turning to wrap herself more firmly against her. Mina let's her take whatever support she needs, shifting to rest her hand on top of her head and cradle it against her shoulder. 

“It’s not like I haven't  _ tried,”  _ There’s a shard of ice burying itself in Mina’s chest at the thought of there being someone else, but the way she stiffens is hardly noticeable, “But falling in love is a lot harder than just meeting someone on the street and saying ‘hey, we should get married!’”. 

She laughs lightly. “Isn't that how all the kids do it now?” Her lame joke manages to pull just the tiniest smile out of the other woman. “You always were a bit of a romantic.”

Another eye roll. “Sue me for wanting to marry the love of my life someday, Mina, instead of… whatever it is the kids do nowadays.”

Mina snorts unattractively, but she stopped caring about the way she looked a good three drinks ago. It helped that Jihyo made her feel comfortable to begin with. “You say that like we weren’t kids only a few years ago, Ji.”

“We  _ were _ kids only a few years ago, but you know I don’t get this whole… tinder thing… online dating, or whatever.” Jihyo whines childishly, leaning a little too heavily into Mina’s slide and sending them both off course and slightly off the pathway into the street. Mina corrects them almost immediately, glad that there was barely any traffic on the road at this time. Maybe it was time to call it quits on the drinks. “I want something organic, you know?”

Mina sports a vicious grin. “Not gonna get very far with that attitude, grandma.”

Jihyo brings them both to a grinding halt. Both feet planted firmly on the pavement, and the dramatic gasp she lets out is loud enough for half the neighbourhood to hear. “ _ Myoui Mina _ !” 

_ God _ , her name has never sounded so good as it did now. 

“How  _ dare _ you! I’m barely a month older than you!” She starts pushing to get out from under Mina’s arm, but they’re entirely too entangled and Mina brings her arm down a little heavier, laughing loudly at Jihyo’s half-assed attempts to get free. “I cannot!” A smack on her arm. “ _ BELIEVE _ .” Another well placed hit that she couldn’t dodge on her shoulder. “That you’d say that!” 

The last shove sends Mina into a fit of giggles with Jihyo still fighting to escape, but it's not long before she gives up, letting out one last indignant huff. Determinedly looking anywhere except Mina, arms folded and eyebrows dipped into a mournful scowl. But you know, still leaning heavily into Mina's side, the older girl subconsciously burrowing into the steady embrace, and if she brought it up she  _ could  _ argue that it was for warmth. And for stability, because Mina's more than worried that if they weren't clinging onto each other as they walked, there's a good chance she'd have ended up with her ass in a gutter the moment they'd stepped out of the last bar.

There's another two streets of convincingly sober walking without talking. It's not uncomfortable in the slightest, but Mina sees something funny going on through the window of a bar as they pass by. Her head automatically turns to tell Jihyo, but the words die in her throat at the uncharacteristically pensive expression on the other girls face.

It's withdrawn. A little sad - much too downtrodden for a night where they were both supposed to let loose and forget about their worries for a while. This wasn't the kind of issue that just disappeared in a night though, and Mina knew just how much Jihyo valued her family's approval. 

You know what, fuck it. 

She couldn't fix this. Not at all, even with how intimately she knew Jihyo inside out - knew every hand-crafted part and had even placed a few pieces of herself in the complex structure that comprised everything inside her. This wasn't a part that she could fix, or a piece that she could mend, because how on Earth was Mina supposed to change the fact that Jihyo wasn't married yet? 

“Come on,” She tugs them both down a different street, catching Jihyo off guard at how abrupt she'd been and all the alcohol singing in their bloodstream, making her wobble and lose her footing slightly, “We're going somewhere else.”

“Where are we going?” Mina wasn't stupid enough to not recognise the obvious scrutiny in Jihyo's voice as they walked, the older girl not entirely comfortable with not knowing what was going on. She liked plans. Neat and precise. Liked to know who, what, where and more specifically  _ why _ they were going some place she didn't know, and going down a street she didn't know existed. 

Mina didn't have an answer as to why though. There wasn't much to say, past ‘I don't like seeing you sad’, and, if she  _ really _ wants to be honest, that part of the answer to why is that if Mina hadn't have gone… if Mina had have stayed… 

If she just-

“Downtown,” She answers neutrally, switching the channels in her brain so the words she speaks are safe and suitable for broadcast, “Gonna take you to the best vendor in the whole city.”

Answering where was safer than why, for now at least. 

Jihyo quirks a brow. “Even better than Mr Kim’s?” 

“Even better than Mr Kim's.” Both her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Understandably, seeing as Mr Kim sold the best damn dumplings Mina had ever had in all of her twenty four years of living. “Listen Ji, her ramen is… you just gotta try it, okay? She does this little  _ thing _ with the soup and her noodles are the softest in the city, and sometimes she gives me the leftover duck wraps and, I'm pretty certain if we got Jeong’s dad to try them, he'd back me up and confirm that Mrs Park might be the best culinary expert in the district.”

It might be the alcohol, but Mina swears Jihyo's eyes shine under the streetlights. “You still ramble when you're drunk.”

“Hey,” She takes her hand off of Jihyo's in self defence, holding it up in front of her in mock surrender, “I only speak the truth - this woman is a god send.”

Jihyo hums skeptically in the back of her throat, side-eyeing her with thinly veiled distrust that’s dampened by the amused smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. The look is incredibly disarming; it’s not  _ Mina’s _ fault that Jihyo’s as attractive as she is, and even with her inborn bias towards everything that was Park Jihyo, the expression hits her harder than any cocktail or shot from a bar; hard and fast with heat coiling in her belly right next to the rum from drink number four. 

She's not sure what that means. 

“You got a lot to live up to, Myoui.”

Mina grins. 

“I've always liked a challenge.”

  
  


///

  
  


They don't make it to the Ramen stand. 

At least, not at this point in the night. Not when Mina had planned to, because had she  _ known _ when she chose to take the detour down past the bay that there was a carnival going on that both herself and Jihyo would get dragged into, she probably would have avoided the bay and have taken the long way to downtown. 

Or maybe not, because now her stomach’s full of some wickedly strong cocktail that was being handed out in little, half-cut coconuts, topped off with tiny umbrellas that had somehow found their way behind their ears after, tucked carefully in place with hearty giggles that they could barely hear over the blaring party music. 

This… isn't  _ exactly _ what she had planned, but she could go with it. 

She isn't sure how long they've been here, but she knows she wants to see Jihyo smiling like this for as long as possible; bathed in the soft, orange lights from the paper lanterns strung overhead the boardwalk, short hair fanning out with every wobbly pirouette she did under Mina’s arm, hands held tight and moving her way back into the younger girls space almost as soon as she’d left it. 

The haircut suits her. It's different from any hairstyle Mina had seen her with; a rich, deep black that had almost seemed blue when they walked under the streetlights earlier in the night, and short - cut just above her shoulders so that it barely brushed the top of her blouse when she sways her head from side to side with that big, heart wrenching smile stretching from ear to ear. She wants to tell her how much it suits her. How pretty she looks this way, and that the cut draws attention to her smile. 

She does, loudly, shouting so that Jihyo can hear her words over the band playing twelve feet away. Leans in  _ extra  _ close just to make sure the other woman hears it, paying no mind to the hand gripping at her waist to pull her closer (old habits really  _ do _ die hard). 

And Jihyo beams, unrestrained, and her cheeks flushed with alcohol - shouts a ‘thank you’ back and pulls Mina close again. 

Whatever lines and boundaries that should have been established have been thoroughly crossed out and redrawn in the sand, a messy, scrawled circle that surrounds the two of them as they sway slowly in the middle of the crowd. As though nothing had changed, really. That they were still just as in love as they had been two years ago, because Jihyo's chin still fits perfectly against the crook of Mina’s shoulder when they're pressed front to front, and Jihyo still knows that Mina’s neck is sensitive when her mouth gets a little bit closer than before, humming along quietly to the song that neither of them recognise. 

It's the same, and yet not. It's hard to pick out from the smell of sea salt in the air and the alcohol on their breath, but Mina doesn't recognise the perfume on Jihyo's skin. Doesn't recognise the bold, black line peeking out from underneath the hem of Jihyo's blouse when she turns her head to the side - would never have expected the Jihyo she knew to take such a defiant stance against the ideals of her parents as a  _ tattoo _ of all things. Can't wait to tell Jihyo about the tattoo hiding under  _ her _ clothes on her left shoulder blade, because Jihyo wouldn't have known about that either. 

Two years isn't long, but it's enough. Long enough for Jihyo to get a tattoo, cut her hair and change her perfume, and long enough for Mina to realise that life wasn't what she expected it to be. 

It kind of stings now that she thinks about it, cheek pressed against Jihyo's hair and hands wrapped around her waist, trying to figure out just what the hell her new perfume was. Lavender? Jasmine? Not knowing left a bitter taste in her mouth that Mina tries to quell with a lungful of ocean air, but all she can taste is Jihyo and nothing more. Nothing less. 

“Is this what you meant when you talked about being a little more reckless?” If she's thinking about her already, she may as well bring up the question that's been lingering on her mind since they got here. The song playing changes to something a little slower, and this one she vaguely recognises. 

Jihyo laughs against her neck. “Nothing could have prepared me for this.” She gestures at everything around them with a slight nod, pulling away from Mina slightly as she does. “When I meant reckless I meant like… something stupid? I guess?”

“Are you trying to tell me that sneaking our way into a late night carnival and dancing to a tropical rip off of baby come back with pretty pink umbrellas in our hair isn't a  _ tiny _ bit silly?”

Jihyo flushes an equally toned shade of pink as her eyes go in and out of focus on the umbrella tucked behind Mina’s ear, reaching up to pull the umbrella out from her own hair. Mina plucks it gently from between her fingers, tucking it carefully back in its rightful place and taking Jihyo's hand back into her own to keep her from removing it again. 

“I mean… yeah okay, maybe this is a  _ little _ silly.” Mina beams at the assent, swaying them both slowly to the beat. “But I don't know… I guess I meant something more…”

“More…?” 

Jihyo laughs softly, a little sheepish. “More…” She trails off, shaking her head with a grin. “It's stupid, actually. I don't really know where I'm going with this.”

Mina does. “More dangerous?” Surprise flashes across Jihyo's flushed face, and Mina knows she's hit the nail on the head. “Something reckless enough to shake us both out of our everyday routine. Something that we can't just wake up tomorrow and think ‘hey, that was fun, we should do that every Friday’.”

Pretty lips curl up in a mesmerising smile. “Yeah, exactly. Something with consequences.”

Mina takes a couple of steps back, really looks Jihyo up and down a few times (and maybe a couple more, just for added measure). “Look at  _ you _ , Park Jihyo - rebel in the making.” She feels a wicked smile break out on her own face at the teasing, and the light hit of Jihyo's hand against her shoulder as they sway. 

“I've had some time to think about it,” She shrugs again, trying to look nonchalant. “And maybe being bad sounds kind of good.”

Mina needs at least another coconut and a half for this. It's dangerous, all of this - being in such close quarters with the girl who, by all accounts, was nothing less than the love of her life. 

But isn't that the whole point of this? 

Okay. Deep breaths. 

“How dangerous is _dangerous_?” If Jihyo noticed the lull in conversation she doesn't react to it, save a slight raise of her brows as Mina speaks. “Like, are we talking ‘Nayeon and Chaeyoung setting fire to the stove in college’ dangerous, or ‘Sana and Momo hiding from the cops in that abandoned house’ _dangerous?”_

__ The memories draw wide smiles from them both. “Those are both pretty dangerous.” 

“Our friends have done some pretty reckless things,” She speaks between breathy laughter, riding high on the nostalgia cloud that had begun to blanket conversation, “It’s a wonder all of us are still in one piece.”

Jihyo laughs. “True.” She pauses for a moment, hips stilling and bringing Mina’s to a halt too in the middle of the crowd. “Alright, well I don't want to burn my hand off.”

“That's a start.” Jihyo ignores her teasing. 

“But I also don't want to get haunted by the poltergeist that apparently tripped Momo down the stairs.”

“You know, Sana actually told me when she was drunk that it was her that tripped her.”

Jihyo gasps. 

“On accident, of course!” Mina adds as an afterthought, laughing at the the wide eyed shock on Jihyo's face. “But Momo didn’t see and Sana thought that would be the best way to stop her from suggesting we all go to that stupid house every halloween.”

“Well, it worked.” Jihyo laughs brightly, taking too much of a step back and apologising hastily to the blissfully unaware couple she bumped into. “We never did go back to ‘that stupid house’.”

“Is that what you’re suggesting?” Mina smirks, eyebrow raised teasingly as they move against each other seamlessly. “That we get our cheap thrills from climbing through the broken window at the back and go on a little ghost hunt?”

“I don’t play with demons, Myoui.”

“Oh? Then how do you explain all those times you helped Jeong prank Nayeon in the morning?” The usual wave of regret that accompanies thinking of those two doesn't wash over her for once. 

“Self preservation. It was pranked or be pranked,” Jihyo leans back, throwing the back of her hand to her forehead in dramatic flare, “a hellish landscape of whoopee cushions and water balloons, war torn battlefields of whipped cream and-”

“Nice to know the theatrics haven’t changed.” Mina chuckles, low in her throat and Jihyo squints at her through the gaps between her fingers in faux irritation. Irritation that rapidly disappears when Mina starts to move them both to the music again.

“So, no haunted house.” 

Jihyo nods wordlessly, more focused on the lanterns strung above them than the conversation. Which was fine, seeing as Mina was just putting words into her own mouth and trying to prolong the feeling of contentedness in her own chest for as long as possible. But also the longer they danced, the more difficult Mina was finding it to pluck sensible words out of the endlessly deep pool of thoughts sitting at the back of her mind, much too diluted with liquor and euphoria to be of any good to anyone. 

“I’m running out of suggestions, Ji.”

The older girl laughs, lips curved in a teasing smile. “One too many drinks, I think.”

“Mm, I'm better than before though.”

“Yeah,” She hums thoughtfully, eyelids weighted when she blinks and shoots a goofy grin up at Mina, “Much better than before. We wouldn’t have even made it to the third bar if we did this three years ago.”

“Oh we would have,” she drags her hands up to rest loosely around Jihyo’s neck, looking down at her fondly, “I just wouldn’t be walking.” Her eyes focus on the umbrella behind Jihyo’s ear, reaching up to tap at it with her index finger as she speaks. “You’d carry me on your back, or maybe over your shoulder - who knows. You’d figure it out somehow.” 

“I’m starting to think that all those times I had to carry you home were just very elaborate schemes to get out of walking.”

“You caught me,” Jihyo rolls her eyes, pushing Mina away with a slight shove only to close the space as soon as it had widened, “And it wasn’t very elaborate. I didn’t feel much like walking, and you were always happy to oblige.” Mina added with an afterthought. 

“Always.” It’s half mumbled into the shoulder of her shirt, drowned out by the cheers of the crowd when the band continues playing into the next song. Mina hears it clearly somehow, and has just come to accept that maybe she's just more attuned to the woman in her arms than anything else around them. 

It's later than she realised; listening to the repetitive chime of the church bells in the distance as they announce the time to whoever’s listening. She keeps count with them, counting every muted ring in her head and keeping her eyes closed as she subconsciously slows down the sway of their bodies to match the pace. 

Everything else fades away. Disappears into nothing; the raucous music, the jostling crowd bumping into them constantly - even Jihyo, tucked comfortably into the crook of her shoulder and her arms wrapped loosely around her waist. All Mina can hear are the church bells ringing out. 

Nine.

Jihyo's talking to her, she thinks. Can't quite tell. Her voice sounds like she's underwater, like Mina can't quite make out the words but her eyes open to follow the movement of her lips as they shape out syllables and sounds.

Ten.

“- although Graffiti isn't really my thing to be honest. And I have no idea where we're going to get spray cans from at this time of night so maybe following in Banksy’s footsteps is on hold for now-”

Eleven. 

“- s’too cold to go skinny dipping too. Unless the risk you want is onset hypothermia but I'm gonna take the liberty of assuming it's not.” Jihyo's voice is wavering in and out of focus. Mina can't concentrate. 

A thought strikes her with such piercing clarity that she physically halts. Completely grinds to a halt, Jihyo stopping with her and raising an eyebrow in concern. 

“Mina? What's wrong?”

Twelve. 

Every breath feels harder than the one before. Jihyo's saying her name over and over - she can tell by the shape of her mouth; has years of experience seeing the exact same sight too many times to mistake it for anything else. But Mina can't hear her. Not with this stupid, reckless idea running through her head, drowning out any other voice trying to persuade her otherwise. 

The bells stop ringing. 

It's stupid. 

The craziest thing she can think of. 

Utterly reckless. Definitely something she wouldn't be able to solve in the morning. 

But wasn't that exactly what she wanted? 

She grabs a hold of the hand that Jihyo had placed on her shoulder, curling it into her own. She gives her a quizzical look, laced with concern and Mina can only concentrate on her lips. 

“Mina?”

She doesn't pause to think. 

“Let’s get married.”

Everything else comes flooding in as soon as the words leave her lips. The voices and conversation around them; the laughter of a lover and a stranger from the other end of the boardwalk. But most importantly, Jihyo. And the grip of her hand on her waist, and the sharp intake of breath Mina watched her suck in the moment she registered her words. 

The way she looked up at her after. Studying her, searching for any sign of false sincerity, or whether this was just a cruel joke. Black pupils staring directly into her own, blown wide with alcohol and the desperation to make poor decisions. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it. 

A nod. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Mina squeezes her hand. 

“Okay.” Jihyo smiles then, and Mina can’t help but smile too. “I’ll marry you.”

  
///

**CHAPTER 2**

///  
  


_ Two pairs of footsteps ring out loudly against the asphalt, mixed between breathless laughter and desperate pants as Mina leads them both down what she thinks is the right street. She almost stumbles over the kerb but Jihyo's right there, right behind her - reminds her of the fingers threaded tightly between her own and pulls her securely back to her feet.  _

_ Mina felt  _ _ alive.  _

_ “Is this even legal?”  _

_ She laughs loudly, hears the street echo it back to her in kind. “Would it matter if it was?” _

_ A shocked gasp escapes. “Mina!” _ __   
_   
_ __ It’s all she can do not to turn back and look at the scandalised expression on Jihyo’s face. Too scared that if she pauses for even a moment that she’d come to her senses and say no to this whole thing.

_ “Yes; it’s legal.” She bites her lip to try and stop the smile spreading at the stupefied little ‘huh’ she hears behind her. “There’s only one place in the city that does this kind of thing though.” _

_ “I’m curious as to how you know that.” _

_ “Sana. Momo. College. One long night that I spent a good three hours of trying to convince Sana that she should probably think things through, and not make the decision aided by tequila.”  _

_ “You realise how ironic you saying that is, right?” _

_ This conversation should be startling sobering for the both of them. Instead, Mina catches onto the smile in Jihyo's words, and let's the glass bottle she keeps every hope and wish stored in dangle on a fine thread strewn together by their intertwined hands. “Ah, it’s different now though.”  _

_ “How so?” _

_ “We’re older.” Jihyo laughs, and Mina wishes she could catch it somehow; store it somewhere in the glass bottle, between her secret wishes and the things she’s too scared to say out loud. “Bonafide adults - despite how grown up we used to think we were.” _

_ “Speak for yourself,” Her breaths are coming in short, ragged pants. Maybe Mina should slow down. “I’ve always been grown.” _

_ Mina hums suggestively; feels manicured nails digging into the back of her hand in a gentle reprimand. _

_ She laughs a laugh that she hasn't felt in a long time. Unapologetically real; the kind of laugh that bubbles up from somewhere Mina doesn't know how to find until it's there and present in the moment, and each half gasped breath in between feels like golden nectar filling up her lungs. Someone yells at them from a window five stories above them to shut up, and Jihyo yells back twice as loud with drunken indignation in her eyes and Mina's laughter emboldening her words. And they keep running, together. Not stopping for a moment, not even when Mina very nearly stumbles into a couple on a late night walk and Jihyo rattles off a couple of dozen apologies over her shoulder as they run, or when the traffic light blares a vindictive red that Mina pays no heed to, thankful that the road is empty anyway and drags the two of them giggling into the street.  _

_ If she admits it to herself, then yeah - Jihyo's always been fairly grown. A little wiser than the rest of them, and more mature in ways that frustrated Nayeon and Jeongyeon to no end, but also filled them with such tender pride Mina felt almost guilty for catching them watching the girl behind her sometimes.  _

_ “Old before her time,” Nayeon would sigh remorsefully , and Jeongyeon would nod almost automatically in agreement, and Mina would try to pick through the layers and try to catch a glimpse of the underlying dynamics that composed a friendship that started before Jihyo had even left elementary school.  _

_ To no avail, of course. Because the longer she looked, the more she realised that she couldn't really ever put a name to the relationship between them. That, even after years of trying to make sense of it, she just couldn't find a way to explain why Nayeon looked at Jihyo with such vindictive faith, or why Mina could visibly pinpoint the swelling tides of pride that spilled over the tops of Jeongyeon’s crinkled eyelids when Jihyo had nervously revealed she was going to be pursuing a different degree, and not majoring in medicine like her parents wanted her to.  _

_ She could. If she reduces it down to the simple fact that they love her. But it felt like love and everything more, and Mina just… didn’t know how to define that out loud.  _

_ One thing years of observation had taught her though, was that in spite of all the claims and the declarations, and the ever amounting mountains of proof that Jihyo was mature and stable…  _

_ Not this Jihyo.  _

_ Not the Jihyo trailing behind her with unfounded loyalty that Mina knew what she was doing leading them down backstreets and downtown, with her fingers clasped tightly between her own like some sort of proof of the present - that if she could feel Mina physically that all of this was real, and claimable, and not something she could forget when it was all over. Not the Jihyo who laughed like the sunset hid itself in her chest, tucked away out of sight just to trickle golden rays of sunlight into every breath-taking smile. Not the Jihyo who whispered secrets in her ear like a confession in front of the altar, curled into herself with her knees tucked up to her chest as though she could disappear in Mina's arms if she was small enough. Every quietly spoken fear, each tentative breath ghosting over quivering lips and brushing past the too hot skin in the hollow of Mina’s collarbones.  _

_ That was Jihyo stripped bare.  _

_ Unapologetically, incomparably Jihyo. And Mina had loved that version of her the most - so much so that she’s glad she can blame the erratic heartbeat bruising her ribs on the alcohol, and not because all these memories are starting to bleed through her defences and into the present.  _

_ She risks a glance behind her. Stupid really, because the smile on Jihyo's face is enough to knock all the air out of her lungs and have her marathon heartbeat finally falter in it’s pace, even if just for a moment. She stumbles, correcting her footing with far less grace than she would have liked to but it was all her inhibition granted her with all the vodka dulling her coordination.  _

_ She finds herself thinking. Unflinchingly, demandingly - an unrelenting thought reverberating loudly inside the recesses of her mind - that she desperately didn’t want to let her go.  _

_ She squeezes the fingers between her own lightly, exhaling heavily at the way Jihyo seems to tighten her grip in response.  _

_ All these words she wants to say. All of them jumbled up together in her head and entangled in the next stray thought that comes to mind, but none of them complete enough to ever feel right in her mouth. Maybe one day, if she ever manages to figure out just what exactly her brain is trying to tell her, but for now…  _

_ She takes her words and writes them down on a little scrap of paper instead. Folds it neatly, carefully; like so many times before - but this time it feels a little different, and she tucks it gently into that overflowing glass bottle. Just another short expression on the long list of things she’s never quite been able to say. So she thinks it to herself over and over, and tilts her head up to the starless night sky in the vain hope that it might come true. _

_ ‘Stay.’ _

_ //Finish This _

Whoever penned down the fact that the loudest known sound in human history was the explosion of Krakatoa in 1883 had clearly never been inside Mina's head after a night of heavy drinking. 

Her claim to the world record would have to wait though. The first few moments of consciousness feel like she's wading through thick treacle; struggling to move even the slightest bit past the overwhelming weight of a certified hangover. Her eyes blink open tentatively, only to immediate scrunch shut at the minimal light in the room intensifying the throbbing ache clustering at the front of her head. 

It's hard to think through the overwhelming static fuzz embedded in her ears. Even harder when it feels like she could sink into the thick duvet she'd cocooned around herself in the night, melting away into nothing in the sheets as the blankets shift in front of her and pull her arm more tightly around whatever she'd clung to. 

Mina groans pathetically. Scrunches her eyes shut as tightly as she can (as though it'll alleviate any of the pain) and takes a deep breath of what she thinks might be lavender. No, maybe jasmine? 

Wait. 

She freezes, every muscle tensed up in realisation as the blankets seem to shift against her again. It takes another moment to register the soft breathing that definitely wasn't hers. Takes maybe half a second to realise that what she thought was a blanket was actually a far too familiar body that she'd managed to wrap herself around, tucked tightly enough that Mina realises she fits perfectly against her frame. 

(Still.)

Her head is still screaming at her, but Mina pushes aside the lethargic weight pulling down at her eyelids to force them open. She blinks slowly, not quite believing that the short, black strands of hair inches from her nose were real. 

Oh no. 

Oh no no no no  _ no… _

She doesn't - she can't… remember  _ anything…  _

__ Her memory’s completely blank. 

It would be nice if she could concentrate; try and collect her thoughts and piece together the things she clearly missed out last night, but that sounds almost impossible when all her stupid, traitorous brain can focus on is how ethereal Jihyo still looks when she's sleeping, and the heightened burst of static fuzz in her ear drums as more light filters into her vision. She groans again and her whole face contorts into a grimace, hissing quietly at the sharp spikes of pain accompanying the movement. 

_ God _ , she couldn't think at all. 

What she can deduct through the nonsensical haze though is that laying here, dangerously comfortable with the familiarity she’d wrapped herself in tempting her to fall back asleep and metaphorically bury her head in the sand, was not helping her at all. Mina’s not stupid, and even though she wants to blame it on something other than the fact that it’s just… really nice to sleep next to someone, she’s not a liar either.

Slowly, carefully - despite how fervently her entire body protested any sort of movement, she tries to extract herself from her perfect big spoon position. Jihyo's body heat seems to linger for a few moments, Mina slipping her arm over her waist and sliding away with as much painstaking care as she could muster in the moment. The blankets stir slightly, and Mina sucks in a fearful breath watching the other girl adjust to the newfound space behind her. 

It takes another two minutes for Jihyo's breathing to settle back into a relaxed rhythm. Mina could have moved in that time, but she finds herself unable to look away. Another jolt of pain stabs into the back of her eyes and she stifles the groan into her palm, running her hands harshly against her face. 

She thinks she fucked up. 

It's too much and not enough all at once. There's got to be a logical explanation for all of this - why she ended up here, cuddled up like high school sweethearts at a sleepover instead of tossing and turning on her own, much less comfier mattress at home. But her brain doesn't seem to want to travel down that path of rationalisation and sense. 

Her thoughts kick into overdrive. Like some, oddly bizarre new age survival instinct, rattling off a mental checklist in her head. The disgusting fuzz clinging to the inside of her mouth that made her tongue feel like it could have been the carpet in her grandmother's living room meant alcohol.  _ Far _ too much alcohol, at that. She remembers the first shot, and the second, and the fifth, but everything starts to get a little hazy when… when they… got to the pier? Bits and pieces of a song float around her brain, fragmented images flashing through her head as she clutches her face in her hands and just tries to  _ think _ . 

The pier was the other side of town. What in the  _ fuck _ happened between then and the two of them ending up back here?

A quick glance confirms that, okay yeah - she's still wearing most of her clothes. Except another look actually corrects her initial assumption because these are definitely Jihyo's sweatpants she's wearing. The second look also informs her that she's currently topless, fighting back the strip of heat that flashes along her cheeks. She doesn't have the willpower to figure out what either of these revelations mean. 

She pushes herself to her feet. Her eyes have sort of adjusted to the light in the bedroom, as good as they ever will with the heavy duty blackout curtains and the fact she can barely keep them open for longer than ten seconds without needing to close them again. There's a lot of things that are different to the last time she'd been in here. The already unsteady pool of nausea pressing down into her stomach simmered uneasily at the thought, bringing her hand up to rub slow circles against the skin there as she noticed everything new. 

Jihyo got a new wardrobe, she notes with a hint of a smile pulling at her lips. She'd always hated the archaic, outdated piece of shit (her words, not Mina's) and the picture frames lined up neatly on the top of her dresser are new, too. Mina looks away quickly, not really prepared for her reaction if she recognised her own face in one of the frames staring back at her. Her bedsheets are different too. Prettier than the dark purple ones Mina remembers too well - a deep, rich red with small flower spirals reaching up from the sides. 

Her eyes inevitably drift up to the small tuft of black hair peeking out from beneath the sheets. She steps closer before she can put much thought into her reasons for doing so, not sure why she's so intent on committing this sight to her hangover riddled memories. 

Jihyo is beautiful. That much is a given, and something Mina thinks couldn't ever possibly be untrue, but this Jihyo; cheek squished up against the pillow, mouth slightly open and face lax with sleep - devoid of any tension that Mina  _ knows _ pulls at her features the moment she slips into consciousness - she thinks might just be the most beautiful. 

It was a tough call to make, especially with such fierce competition, but she thinks of this as something she can keep to her own thoughts. Something catches her eye when Jihyo shifts in a way that exposes more of her neck. A line of black; unfamiliar, and obviously the beginnings of a tattoo that stretches somewhere (how far, she has no idea) beneath the sheets, and something clicks in Mina's head. 

She remembers this. Remembers seeing this at the pier, head tucked against Jihyo's shoulder as they sway in tandem to the song she's starting to recall with a piercing clarity. Remembers half-cut coconut cups and drinks that felt way too easy sliding down her throat, and how pretty Jihyo looked with the tacky pink cocktail umbrella tucked behind her ear. 

She remembers standing way too close for someone who wasn't supposed to be in love anymore. Hands on waists and fingers curled playfully in the loops of Jihyo's jeans. Cheeks that hurt from the permanent smile that seemed to be glued in place, 

She remembers church bells. 

Her hand slaps over her open mouth instinctively, eyes wide with disbelief at the conversation that's cycling in a vicious loop loud enough to drown out the hazy static in her ears. 

' _ Marry me.' _

_ A pause. A heartbeat, maybe two. Mina can only focus on the way Jihyo's eyes glaze over as she looks back at her. _

Bile, fast and bitter tries to crawl it's way up her throat but Mina forces it back down. The sensation burns her chest and she staggers on the spot. 

_ 'Okay.' _

_ 'Okay?' _

_ 'Okay.' Jihyo looked so pretty with the festival lights above them. She should tell her that. 'I'll marry you.' _

__ "Fuck," Mina whispers between her fingers, absolute dread setting into her entire body, "Fuck, fuck, fuck,  _ fuck!"  _

__ Oh god, she…  _ she...  _

__ There’s no way she did that. Her head feels like it’s about to break, both hands clutching at the sides desperately to try and stop it splitting in two.

She has to get out of here. 

Her eyes dart to the door, moving as fast as she can. Pulls it open wide enough to slip out before shutting it without making a sound, trading tip toes for unsteady footsteps down the hallway and into the kitchen. 

It's all different. Mostly - there's still the same refrigerator, and the coat rack looks the same, but Mina doesn't have time to register this much at all, eyes darting around frantically for any signs of her clothes. Her phone and keys are on the kitchen counter thank god, clutching both to her chest like they were a lifeline. 

The panic only kicks up a notch when she realises her phone's on 7% battery. She locks it with a bitten back curse, the front door constantly in the side of her vision as she scans the apartment for her clothes. 

They're probably back in Jihyo's room. She stifles a groan. She can't leave without a top or something, but she needs to get out of here before she slips into a full on breakdown. 

There's a pile of neatly folded laundry on the side, and Mina picks out an all too familiar sweater with their college insignia printed cheaply on the front. The design is flaking but still legible, and Mina ignores the dull thudding in her chest as she slips it on over her head. Maybe she didn't think this through, because,  _ yeah _ okay, now all she can smell is lavender and it's messing with her head even more but beggars can't be fucking choosers, Mina, so suck it the  _ fuck _ up. 

She grabs her phone and keys back up off of the table, spying her wallet lying abandoned on the floor in front of the couch and grabbing it wishing she could feel even a tiny bit relieved that she didn't lose it last night. Her eyes catch on more photo frames as she walks around - sees Nayeon and Jeongyeon at the top of a roller-coaster from a theme park they all went to some five years ago now, and usually the sight of both of their faces contorted in terror would coax a chuckle from her chest but now it's just… 

Awful. And heavy. And suffocating, because  _ she  _ fucked up, and  _ she _ made things difficult for everyone, and  _ she's  _ avoided most of her best fucking friends for the past two years because she was the indisputable monster that broke Park Jihyo's heart. 

Guilt seeps in then. Paralysing and heavy, rooting her feet down as she starts to second guess this decision. Because she was about to leave again for her own selfish inability to handle when she made a mistake, or when things got too intense, and she was about to leave again without a single explanation as to  _ why.  _

The front door is right in front of her. Jihyo is sleeping just a wall away, none the wiser. 

She almost stayed.

She really did this time. Thought about it for a solid five minutes, standing to attention like the world's most disobedient soldier in the middle of Jihyo's fucking kitchen two seconds away from imploding in on herself. 

But she was still too selfish. 

Her eyes burn when she pulls on her shoes and slips hastily out the door, but she doesn't deserve to cry. Never has. 

_ // _

**08:23 Mina**

Are you awake?

**08:27 Momo**

bout 2 go 4 a run, why??

**08:28 Mina**

Any chance you could meet me?

**08:30 Momo**

surprised ur even awake lol - send me the address and ill b there :)

**08:31 Mina**

Thank you :)

Also,

**08:31 Momo**

‘dont tell sana’ yeah alrdy kinda guessed that

**08:32 Mina**

You’re the best <3

**08:33 Momo**

so ive been told

//

The cafe a few blocks away is nice. 

Mina had garnered more than a few odd looks as she made her way there, which makes sense considering her highly fashionable attire of old, faded sweatpants and outdated sweater. Topped off with the classy heels she'd worn last night, she thinks that the look really works for her. 

(She looks like a mess. She  _ feels _ like a mess.)

The barista behind the counter looks at her for the umpteenth time in a minute, arms folded and face set in a scowl. Probably because she hasn't ordered yet and she looks… questionable, at best, but her legs are too shaky to stand in a queue and do anything right now. Her hands shift restlessly against the table top, fingers thrumming with the kind of anxiety that only follows stupid decisions and unpredictable outcomes. 

If Sana were here, she'd thread her fingers between her own and rub a practiced thumb against the back of her hand. But then again maybe she wouldn't, because Mina definitely doesn't deserve any sort of kindness right now. The thought of her friends has her fingers moving to start making little tears in the complimentary napkins, and the barista's frown deepens. 

The bell above the door chimes, and the rush of air that floods through her chest at Momo's welcoming smile is astonishing. The older girl presses a button on her watch to record her time from her run, barely even looking out of breath as she slides into the seat opposite Mina with a grin. 

"So," Momo begins, leaning on the table to rest her chin in her hand, "You messed up, huh?" 

Mina feels her eyebrows shoot up and Momo laughs. 

"I know that face, Mina. And I know that the only reason you asked me not to tell Sana is because you physically can't deal with her being disappointed in you." The eye contact is unwavering, but it's not the kind of piercing inspection of all her flaws that Sana would have given her. Momo's voice softens. "Which means you messed up."

A wet laugh bubbles up before she can stop it. "Yeah. Yeah, I messed up."

Momo hums thoughtfully, rolling her chin slowly in her palm. The older girl looks good. Really good; could even almost be mistaken for a functioning adult, what, considering she’s spending her saturday morning exercising responsibly and looking more polished and put together than should be really legal after running the ten blocks or so from her apartment to the cafe. She’s not even sweating or anything. Momo sighs, placing her hands on her thighs and pushing herself up off of the chair with a kind smile. 

“Sounds like this is the kind of thing that’d be better talked about over a muffin or two. And, maybe a coffee? You kind of look like you need one.”

Mina manages a half-hearted chuckle. “Maybe three. Let me pay, though.” It was the least she could do, at least one thing she could do right. She plucks her wallet out of the sweatpants, flipping it open only to blink in blank horror.

“Mina?”

“I…” She swallows heavily, sinking back in her chair in disbelief. “I don’t know where my money’s gone.” 

Cash. Mina had a couple hundred thousand won worth of cash in her wallet, nowhere to be seen. Momo double checks her wallet just in case, lips pursed in thought. “Did you spend it all last night?”

“No I… I used my card, I think.” Yeah. Yeah that was right, Mina used her card at the first four bars. Handed over a few bills at the pier festival because the vendors only took cash, and then… and then…

**_“Do_ ** _ you have any cash on you?” _

_ Jihyo pauses for a moment, bringing a finger drunkenly up and tapping at her lips. “Mmm a few bills, nothing more than ten thousand though, why?” _

_ “The chapel only takes cash.” Mina’s pulling her wallet out as she speaks, rifling through the crisp notes thoughtfully. “I have enough, I think.” She takes it all out, almost losing her balance if Jihyo’s arms weren’t wrapped supportively around her waist. “Thanks.” She grins, and then giggles at herself and her lack of sobriety. Jihyo rolls her eyes but there’s no malice, and Mina shifts in her hold to tuck the wad of notes securely in the back pocket of Jihyo’s jeans.  _

_ “What are you doing?”  _

_ “I trust you more than I trust me to keep this safe right now.” Jihyo let’s out a small ‘ah’, nodding affirmatively at the decision. Mina feels the movement against her shoulder, limbs not quite coherent as they seem to settle in place around the other girls back for a few moments longer. Just… a few  _ **_moments…_ **

__ “Mina?”

She snaps back to the sight of Momo looking at her in concern. She’s running out of napkins to tear up. “I gave it to Jihyo.” 

With anybody else, she might have expected that flinchingly awkward, pin-drop silence that would follow the ambiguity of that answer. The kind that would have Mina squirming uncomfortably against the hard backrest on the cafe chair, have all that uncertainty spreading through every inch of her under the scrutiny of knowing that the sequence of her actions were being pulled apart and stitched back together in someone else's head. 

Momo nods thoughtfully, not even bothering to question Mina further on why exactly her money was in Jihyo’s possession. “Guess this one’s on me then.” 

Momo fixes another smile at her before she makes her way over to the counter, the barista looking at her with a damn sight more politeness than she’d spared for Mina. She watches the interaction impatiently, leg bouncing rapidly the entire time. Everything in her head and her body is tangled and messy and apparently coded in a language that Mina has never known (and she knows at least four), but the one thing she does recognise above every other indecipherable feeling is shame. 

It’s uneasy. Boiling magma churning angrily in the pit of her stomach, filling her chest with smoke and her throat with the ashes. It feels like she’s suffocating on her own mistakes and she doesn’t know how to make it stop. Watching Momo helps to cool the flames a little, but even the familiarity of a piece of home can’t settle her nerves like it should. 

Maybe this time she’s gone too far. The barista is keeping Momo longer than she should; another victim of the patented Momo effect, showing too much teeth when she smiles in a way that Mina might have found pretty if she hadn't been so cold to her earlier. Momo is tactfully oblivious, as always - it’s easier, she says, to put on a carefully crafted mask of infallible naivety. That way no one can argue when their advances are neither encouraged nor denied, and Mina watches the dazzling smile falter on the barista’s face as Momo makes her way back to the table balancing two drinks and several muffins trapped between her arm and her stomach. 

“Here.” The smell of fresh coffee hits like a warm welcome, and she reaches out gingerly now that she finally has something to busy her nervous fingers - shredded napkins forgotten. A muffin accompanies the drink after, but the thought of biting into the fluffy, blueberry riddled treat has her stomach heaving in protest. She takes a sip of her coffee, forgetting to flinch when it scalds her tongue. She pulls a face at the bitter aftertaste and Momo nudges a few packets of creamer towards her. 

She’s aware of the older girl watching her carefully the entire time her fingers struggle to open the flimsy packets. She’s also keenly aware that Momo’s deliberately waiting for her to take the initiative and talk first. It’s pathetic, really - how she can’t even do this right, fumbling through even the easiest of tasks. She succeeds after the third try, pouring in the first packet. And then the second, and the third. She catches Momo’s line of sight, looking at her with unveiled curiosity and eyes narrowing when they linger on her hands.

“You’ve lost your favourite ring.”

Mina brings the back of her hand away from the cup, tensing up when she notices that the silver band usually nestled at the base of her middle finger is conspicuously missing.

**_“Wait!”_ **

_ Mina’s arm almost gets pulled out of her socket, getting pulled to a grinding halt a few blocks away from the chapel. The warmth between her fingers slips away and Jihyo holds her face in her hands, mouth dropped open in a perfect circle. Mina watches her in bemusement. _

_ “We haven’t got any rings!”  _

_ Mina’s liquor clouded brain fumbles for a few moments, shuffling through the racks of information in her head. She reaches back, pulling Jihyo’s hands away from her face and slotting her fingers back between her own. “It’s fine, Ji. They sell rings there.”  _

_ Her mouth forms a smaller circle, a quiet little ‘oh’ slipping out at the information. She smiles sheepishly and Mina’s face splits into an uncontrollable grin. She’s about to tug them back into motion, taking another step towards the chapel but the hand she’s attached to stays firmly rooted to the spot. Mina glances back with a quirked brow. _

_ “Kindofwantaniceringthough,” Jihyo mumbles in one, slurred string of words, lips slightly pursed and looking down at the floor much like a child would. It’s cute, Mina thinks, stepping back to stand in front of the older girl with a bright smile. _

_ “How nice a ring?” She decides to humour her, relishing the renewed spark in Jihyo’s eyes behind the liquor glazed sheen. _

_ “A pretty ring.” She squeezes her hand tightly, reaching out to clasp her other one and hold that tightly too. “But simple. Never wanted a big gem or anything like that, but maybe… layed...layered? Fitted?” _

_ “Inlaid?” Mina offers. _

_ “Inlaid!” Jihyo’s smile is all teeth and gums, stretching as far into her cheeks as Mina had ever seen. “A pretty, simple ring inlaid with gems.”  _

_ Mina doesn’t really pause to think. She has a ring sitting prettily on her middle finger, and if Jihyo wants a ring, then she’s going to get a ring. Jihyo’s hand lingers in the air after they separate, watching curiously as Mina fiddles with the silver band until it’s pinched between her thumb and forefinger. She takes Jihyo’s hand with as much care as her inebriated state would allow, focusing intensely on the task at hand, slipping the well-worn band down to the base of Jihyo’s ring finger. _

_ “Pretty enough?”  _

_ Jihyo stares at the ring in disbelief, hand outstretched as far away from her face admiring the way it sat on her finger. It was too big; fitted perfectly for Mina’s middle finger, and not Jihyo’s slightly smaller ring finger, sitting loosely in place and glinting when she moved under the streetlight. No gems, but rather a finely detailed scripture that took up the entire circumference, reciting a line from Mina’s favourite book as a teenager.  _

_ Jihyo positively beams. “It’s perfect.” She’d have stood there all night admiring the way it looked on her finger had Mina not taken her hand back into her own, taking a moment to trace her thumb along the warm metal.  _

_ “Keep it safe,  _ **_yeah?”_ **

__ “I… gave it… to Jihyo.”

Momo blinks at her incredulously. Mina watches a myriad of emotions play out on her face, shuffling through cue cards of ways to start whatever it was she was trying to say. Her face twists into disbelief. Then confusion. Balances delicately somewhere in between frustration and a milder form of despair before finally settling into reluctant acceptance, Momo setting her hands exasperatedly on the top of her head and exhaling heavily through her nose.

“What else do you remember?”

Mina takes a hefty gulp of her coffee, not caring that it’s still much too hot. "I… I don't know."

"You don't  _ know?"  _ Momo's head tilts back to look up at the ceiling. 

"I think I blacked out?" 

"Okay teenage renegade," Mina rolls her eyes at the teasing lilt to Momo's voice, "What do you - wait, seriously? Like;  _ blacked  _ out, blacked out?" 

"Like 'I can't even remember how I got home' blacked out."

Momo makes a small noise of wonder. "Huh. That's a throwback." Mina snorts, not bothering to fight the smile making its way onto her face. "But anyway, do you remember what you were going to do? Like, if you had anything planned or like the last thing you did before got sucked into another realm?" 

The coffee machine hisses loudly, Mina flinching at the abrupt interruption. Her mind's doing that thing where it focuses on every tiny detail happening around her - and as far away from the conversation as she could get. She takes a sip of her coffee. It's still hot, but it doesn't burn her mouth anymore. 

"That bad?" Momo's eyebrows shoot up at the telltale lack of a response. "I mean you're still here in one piece, so it can't have been the worst thing in the world."

"I think we got married."

A spoon clinks repeatedly against the side of a cup. Momo blinks once, then twice. "You think you got married."

It was more of a statement than a question, as though Momo was having a hard time grasping the impact of those words strung together. Mina answers anyway. "I think we got married. That was our last course of action before I blacked out, anyway."

"And you…" Momo looks Mina up and down, piecing together everything. "... stayed at hers?" Mina nods. "And you… left?" 

The pool of shame burns impossibly hotter. Mina keeps her gaze trained on the table and nods. 

"Mina…"

"I know."

Momo sighs then. It's hard to tell with her eyes focused down, but Mina thinks she's got her head buried in her palms. 

"I'm going back." Momo's head snaps up in surprise. Mina repeats herself, more firmly. "I'm going back. It was just… a lot, you know? Waking up right next to her. Kind of felt like nothing had changed for a moment and that scared me more than I thought it would." A hand settles itself on top of hers to save another napkin from its untimely demise. Mina looks up and Momo doesn't say anything. Just smiles at her, and the warmth in it makes her feel a little less like an absolute bastard. 

"I won't run away again. Not like before, don't worry."

"I think I reserved the right to be a little worried, given your track record." The jibe pulls an unexpected laugh of disbelief out from Mina. Momo frowns worriedly. "Too soon?" 

"No no," Mina waves her off mirroring the sheepish smile on Momo's face with an authentic one of her own, "I deserved that."

Silence follows her for a few seconds afterwards. Momo laughs quietly, head falling back in her chair to stare aimlessly up at the ceiling. Something indistinguishable passes over her face, but it looks a lot like relief. "Yeah, maybe you did. You're stubborn - you know that, right?" 

Oh  _ boy _ , did she know that. And everyone around her. "As stubborn as Sana?" Safe. Safe. This was safe. 

Momo's head snaps back down, face scrunched up as though she'd sucked on something sour. "Oh god no." Then her head tilts to the side, as though she were reconsidering herself. "Well, actually, I don't know." Mina feels her mouth open in disbelief, and Momo laughs. "Don't act surprised. You and I both know just how stubborn  _ all _ of us are - just when it comes to different things."

"Like you practicing into the early hours every morning whenever you had a recital due."

"Or you living on cup ramen for two months because you refused to let us know that your hours had been cut and you didn't want to inconvenience us."

  
  
  


_ //Back to cafe. Momo ‘don’t worry I’ve got this’.Take a sip. Momo watching her. Studying her. Picked Momo over Sana bc Sana is /too/ perceptive, but Momo is too. Waiting for her to talk first. Sighs, is about to speak, but Momo ‘You’ve lost your favourite ring’. _

_ //Flashback. Hurried, frantic. Lot’s of giggling and bemoaning and snap decisions. Realise haven’t got rings. Mina ‘I’ll give you mine’. Slides it into Jihyo’s finger. ‘Keep it safe’.  _

_ //Back to cafe. ‘I gave it to Jihyo’. Momo disbelief. ‘What else do you remember?’ Mina can’t. Can’t remember anything past that. ‘You have to go back and talk to her’. ‘I know, it was just… a lot. Being back there with her. Waking up like that for the first time in a while. I’m not going to run away again.’ _

_ //Go back to Jihyo’s. Take’s Mina 5 minutes just to get out the lobby and go up the elevator. Pacing. Raises fist to knock but doors left on latch. Jihyo surprised to see her. Didn’t expect her to come back.  _


End file.
